Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 24 June 2025, 7:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 24th June 2025 at 7:30pm 

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  1. Webcast Finished

1 Minutes - 13th February 2025

Hello, and good evening, everyone.
Welcome to the environment overview and scrutiny committee for Tuesday, 24th of June.
I'm councilor Jamie Colcley of St. Mary's, and I'll be chairing the meeting tonight.
I'm joined tonight by councilor Paul White, the cabinet member for environment, and also
Paul Chadwick, the executive director for environment and community services.
I will ask that members of the committee introduce themselves when they first speak or participate in discussions.
And as well as invited guest speakers to introduce themselves when they speak too.
So starting, whether there are any apologies for absence, I believe we got full house, excellent.
So then starting with the agenda, we got item one, which is the minutes.
So are there any objections to confirming the minutes of the 13th of February as a correct record?
No, so that's correct.

2 Declarations of Interest

Next do we have any declarations of interest so that's either pecuniary or
other vegetable and non -vegetable interests.
Nothing, we're good there.

3 Biodiversity Action Plan (Paper No. 25-203)

Okay.
So we can now get straight into the agenda.
So our first item is on the biodiversity action plan.
So that's paper number 25 -203.
You'll all be aware that this paper is reflective of the recent changes to OVU and
scrutiny committees, so there's gonna be a bit of a different discussion.
This is new to all of us, so we're going to be eating our way through it.
Councilor White, did you want to make a couple words before we started?
Yeah, thank you, Chair.
Yes, it's very exciting first opportunity to build a policy from the ground up.
So we are getting the biodiversity paper here for strategy.
and it can include and highlight the groups and people we feel that we need in the new
plan including, and we have two speakers tonight who will give us a good opportunity to get
into the depths of biodiversity, but we have an opportunity to be really collegiate here
and build something across the two parties
that we can all be proud of.
So, as I say, really exciting moment,
and I'll hand you back to the chair.
Thank you, Councillor White.
So first we have, first we have officers
that are going to be saying a few words about biodiversity,
and then we've got, we'll have two guest speakers
in which they will have a opportunity
to speak for five minutes and then questions,
and then we'll be opening the floor,
for trying to find the key points that we as the committee
want to pursue with when writing this action plan.
So first, Mr. Andrea, would you like to start?
Yes, thank you very much.
My name is Thorsten Dreyer.
I'm the head of Arts, Parks, and Events.
And we're just going to give you a quick overview
of where we are with the development
of biodiversity action plans.
Why are we here tonight?
And it's really to ask committee to help us with some key lines of inquiry that we should
pursue as we develop this action plan. So we're going to talk a little bit about the
development and the stakeholder engagement and my subject matter experts here will do that.
And then we have a couple of guest speakers, one of whom will talk about delivering biodiversity
improvements in parks. That's Valerie Selby. And then the second speaker will talk about the work
of the Wandle Catchment Partnership, which is really about zooming out and thinking about
collaboration at kind of larger scale.
And that's Petra Sowitch -Davis, who will be speaking to that.
So I'm going to hand over to my colleague, Sam.
Hello, Sam Morgan, Parks Operations Manager.
The Council adopted a biodiversity strategy in 2020, and since then we've developed an
evidence base of what habitats we have, where they are, and what improvements can be made.
The citizen science program continues delivered by our partners at ENABLE, who run things
like the popular On Your Street survey that monitor biodiversity in private gardens and
things like that.
We've also carried out cross -council officer workshops in February of this year.
We are looking to carry out engagement sessions with green space and amenity groups, run an
survey and support this with a combination of in -person and online
engagement sessions with residents associations partners and community
groups. We will also promote engagement with larger landowners in the borough
and review outcomes to create a robust action plan for delivery. What we already
know is emerging themes promoting employment and skills in the green
economy, the health benefits of access to nature and tie this in with the London
Borough of Culture Legacy. We want to work towards a stronger partnership
approach including other major landowners, public bodies and develop
cross -borough partnerships. This will improve insight and evidence gathering
to monitor progress and guide our future actions. We will work towards creating
maintaining habitats in key locations that we were already aware of or
subsequently become aware of as part of this engagement process,
creating connections between habitats, collecting evidence to monitor the
process and guide future actions. The action plan should promote and encourage
local people to take action and connect with nature and will ensure the council
develops effective systems and policies to make its biodiversity responsibilities.
I will now hand over to my colleague Valerie Sabe from ENABLE to go through some of the improvement
works that have happened since the adoption of the strategy in 2020. Thank you. Thank you, Sam.
I'm just going to go through some of the work that's been delivered over the last four or
five years, so if we want to go to the next slide. So yeah, I'm just going to talk about
really what's happened between the adoption of the biodiversity strategy as we went into 2021
and where we are now, which is with an in -house biodiversity team at the council,
and how we can look at continuing to deliver action and partnership with you as you go
forward with your biodiversity action plan from this all to onwards. Next slide.
And so first of all, as Sam's touched on, it's key that we focus on priority places for biodiversity.
and since the original strategy was published, 74 % of the borough's designated local wildlife
sites are now in positive management for biodiversity. So that's a 13 % increase across four years.
And that's reflection really of the investment of over 90 ,000 pounds that's been sought externally
and which has supported the delivery of borough wide habitat creation projects, environmental
education work and work to interpret nature on site for people and aid wider public engagement.
And as colleagues at the Council will testify, biodiversity net gain and other biodiversity
policies that are now embedded in your local plan ensure that development sites across the borough
have a measurably positive impact on biodiversity, which was particularly crucial to enable us to
connect these key wildlife sites across the borough and make sure biodiversity can move around
safely and appropriately.
Next slide gives us an example of a spotlight of a piece of work in one of these local wildlife sites, which has been Wandsworth Park.
We've been working over the last three years in that site to enhance the overall biodiversity value of the site by creating specifically habitats for pollinators.
But that in turn also means we've improved forage for bats and small birds.
So the photograph bottom left was the first summer where we had flat amenity mown and grass as the usual habitat in that space.
And over the time since about 2021 -22, we've both left the seed bank to regenerate naturally and undertaken some overseeding.
But perhaps most crucially and most engagingly, we've worked with heavy horses to undertake the maintenance and management work here.
It's particularly important to work with different methods like this on the most sensitive sites.
Using horses reduces the carbon footprint of the management work, but the animals themselves also reduce compaction from the management work,
meaning that the soil biodiversity is safeguarded and allowed to thrive.
And also the hoof prints give space for new seeds to germinate.
And as you might understand, that's also been incredibly engaging for the public and we've had a huge number of schools come out and join in with us in creating this habitat and now moving into the maintenance with hay collecting days and so on.
Horses are a great draw for people and it helped people to engage with the site management.
So across the borough there have been lots of projects to focus on improving the habitat
we have and expanding their footprint, improving their quality and condition, but also to create
new habitats across the borough.
So over two hectares of new grassland habitats have been created.
Again this provides forage and nectar for pollinators and bats, which was specifically
highlighted in the previous strategy.
Two thousand square metres of scrub habitat has been created, which is vital for nesting
birds and again allows those pollinators that are foraging on grasslands in the summer somewhere to
overwinter in for the rest of their life cycle so we're not just supporting their summer aspects of
their life cycle we're supporting them throughout the year. As I'm sure you'll be aware and will be
discussed later on more than two and a half thousand trees have been planted and not only
does that provide cooling shade and air quality improvements for us but also for wildlife as well
providing direct homes and food for wildlife as well. And campaigns such as No No May and Let It
Bloom in June, which turn into Knee High in July on some of the better sites, have allowed us to
encourage flowering lawns at over 20 sites and to date we've recorded more than 138 plant species
across these sites and the counts are still ongoing for this June. So again to look at one
Habitat and Spotlight Project, we created a hedge rights and
Mary's Cemetery Battersea Rise, which both improves
connectivity for wildlife, allowing species that are
elsewhere within the cemetery, but also elsewhere on the
parcels of ones with common that sit to the north and the
south of this cemetery, improving connectivity for them
to move around. And as you might agree, the biodiversity
enhancement there is also beneficial for visitors to the
site, aiding the tranquility of the cemetery and ameliorating
traffic pollution for people as well.
So quite a dramatic change there in quite a short space of time.
I think the thing that often gets people most engaged is the work to do with species recovery.
And just some examples here of the kind of work that's happened focusing on species specifically.
So the Friends of Wandsworth Park have done tremendous work to install over 100 nest boxes for Swift in the locality around Wandsworth Park.
And they've undertaken Swift watches and educated a lot of local people.
and that photograph there is from the nest box camera on one of their nest boxes.
The South West 15 Hedgehogs group have been working with the Council's housing team to encourage the creation of hedge roads across the Dover House Road estate,
and take regular surveys so we can understand whether this is proving successful and its aim of improving connectivity for hedgehogs and giving them a route other than the road to move around the area.
And bat species on all the common, we used to have records of four different species.
We've now up to seven species following some citizen science work.
And that has led directly to habitat improvements as well.
It's allowed us to use that evidence base to understand where the bats were foraging,
where they were struggling to forage.
And that's identified where habitat enhancements such as improved wetland planting have been needed,
more scrub, and creating roost opportunities in dead wood.
So again, since this strategy was originally published, there are now 4 ,202 different species
that have been recorded in the borough, and that's a giant leap of over a thousand species
since 2021.
Part of that has been as a result of increased community effort in recording, and again,
as Sam touched on, our community science program has been training local volunteers to use
bat detectors so they can help us with regular monitoring of bat populations and bat activity.
And as I say, this in turn has informed my habitat enhancements have been required.
So that gives you some indication there of the habitat improvement we've been doing on the stock ponds at Wandsworth Common.
And there's a full presentation on the Friends of Wandsworth Common website about the entire bat recording project across last year and habitat improvements that directly led to.
So I think that's it for me, unless there are any questions.
Thank you very much for that, Ms. Selby.
So that was the five -minute speech.
So now we'll open to questions, Ms. Selby.
Oh, sorry.
Do you want to?
Sorry, Chair.
There's one more speaker.
Oh, I thought we were going to do questions for Ms. Selby and then questions for the next
speaker.
To be honest, it's not really a question.
It's more of a comment.
It's just to say that I think this is absolutely fantastic work.
It's so impressive.
I just think it's so important for the well -being of the borough, for the education of kids
across the borough.
I think it's brilliant.
So I look forward to discussing how we can take it further because I think it's great
news.
Anyone else?
Councillor Osborne.
Yeah, Councillor Osborne, Tooting Broadway Ward, Deputy Chair of the Committee.
One striking and important element of what we're doing, I think, is the survey work.
If I can endorse it a bit by talking about one of the world's leading biodiversity experts
and conservation experts, Andrew Gonzalez, who's a professor of conservation at McGill
University, he says if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
And if you can't predict it, you can't protect it.
And that second bit, I think, is very important.
Because if I, it's not really a criticism, but if I have a concern of the kind of survey work we're doing at the moment,
there is a kind of randomness to it. It's good that it's involving members of the public and there's citizen science going on.
But this basic cataloging of species is always limited in what it can achieve.
And there are other ways of measuring your biodiversity.
In particular, I'm very keen to promote something called eDNA surveys, which collect up the
residue of the DNA in the environment, in the water, in the soil, on the plants, even
in the air that's circulating, and can identify animals that you would not normally be able
to make contact with.
Your volunteers will never find them because they're always hiding away, but they will
leave some DNA behind of some sort.
And an eDNA survey, which is not cost free,
but is nevertheless relatively cheap,
and certainly can involve that sort of citizen science
element, which is so important.
The Natural History Museum, who I
think we should indeed talk to about this as a borough,
is already driving a major eDNA project across the country,
but in particular in London, where they get people to send in samples of the pond water
in their back gardens, and the Natural History Museum will tell them what that reveals about
the local species in the area.
The other thing that's important about this is when you're doing these kind of species
surveys, it's not just the number of animals that you're identifying, it's the resilience
of the species that you've got to try and measure.
And so you need an index of the kind of creatures you've got.
But you also need the richness and evenness of the creatures
and how they're distributed.
And that's another feature of the eDNA type survey.
It's much more comprehensive and, in many ways, much easier
to do.
And if there are organizations around that
are helping us to promote it, I think
we should be looking at that.
And can I say something about the SWFs that Valerie mentioned?
There are planning directorates across London where one of the requirements of a new build
is that there are SWIFT boxes, SWIFT bricks included in the building.
I think we do a bit of it here in Wandsworth already, but protecting SWFs, which are an
And there is a problem with the swift population in Britain at the moment.
But protecting the swifts also assists with other birds that can use the swift bricks.
In particular house martins that are red listed at the moment.
And we need to be looking at what's happening with house martins.
But also wrens and starlings and other kind of creatures.
So I'd be keen for the work we're doing on nest boxes for swifts to include the greater promotion, I think, not just in our own new build, but in all kinds of facilities around the borough for swift bricks in the buildings as well.
I've probably said enough for the time being. If I may, I'll come back with questions after the next speaker.
Yeah, sure, that's fine. Did you want a particular answer for Ms. Selby on that point or was
that more sort of general introduction because there were excellent points and so I want
to make sure that we come back to that when we get to the main discussion as well.
I'm not really looking for answers, comment. It's a comment, it's not a question and I'm
trying to promote some ideas to be included in the investigation. I mean, I understand
that what we're doing is looking at what we can and can't do.
And I'm trying to throw things into the mix
to make sure that they're properly considered.
I mean, if one of them's a completely daft idea,
of course I don't mind people saying so.
But it's not really a question, it's a comment.
So I'm keen to hear what comments people have in response.
Okay.
I would say, just because we heard Valerie speaking specifically,
unless there's a question directly at Ms. Soby and her presentation,
which I think there are a couple, but if there are more general comments then they may be
better when we get to the main discussion because then we can make sure to record and
try and get some key points out of it.
So Councillor Cook, I think you were next.
Thank you, Chair.
Councillor Cook, Lavender Ward.
You know, a fairly specific question.
I mean, loads of tremendous stuff here, of course, very impressive, building on many
years' work.
Specific question, do we have any sense of being able to place the 4 ,200 species figure
in context of other inner London boroughs or London generally? Does it stand out as being
especially rich? Presumably it's a function of large open green spaces to some extent.
I think we don't have those figures to hand but I think we can probably get them for you from
Green Space information for Greater London, which is the biodiversity record centre we
work with, who collate all that information across London.
I think what I would say is in part it's emblematic of the amount of green space we have, but
it's also emblematic of the amount of what we call volunteer or survey effort. So the
more you look for things, the more you're likely to find. So in some ways it's hard
to compare bar to bar because the amount of survey effort is going to be different across
different burrows as well. So I think to touch on something Councillor Osborne said, I think
what's quite important is to understand where we're finding these species, how regularly
we're finding them, and do we have any indication of how stable their populations are, whether
they're growing or not. That's a better marker of success in terms of investment in biodiversity
than just pure numbers, if I might be so bold.
Councillor Apps, did you also have a question?
Yeah, hi.
Councillor Apps, Shaftesbury and Queenstown Ward.
I wanted to ask, you mentioned about the 13 % increase over four years for biodiversity,
which I thought was really interesting because it made me think about the fact we should
be thinking about targets.
as Council Osborn's come on to different ways you can look at targets, but what targets we should be setting.
And I wanted to know if there was a target set, and if we met it or if we exceeded it.
And also, if we are thinking about measuring it for future,
what kind of target you think would be realistic, but also ambitious.
So just making sure that we set the sites.
Also, I had made a note saying we should also be looking at how we measure it.
Council Osborne has come up with some interesting ideas how we might do that, but how have we
measured this?
Thank you.
I think that the 13 % increase figure was specifically about local wildlife sites.
There are 31 designated across the borough and there is a standard way of identifying
whether they are considered to be a positive conservation management, which is what that
figure reflected. And that information is laid out by DEFRA and is reported by the council
annually as part of the single data list. So there's quite a clear set of parameters
as to what needs to be measured for a site to be considered as being in positive conservation
management. I would also flag that those local wildlife sites are a mixture of both council -owned
and managed land and privately -owned and managed land. So I think in some ways, in terms of
meeting targets and continuing to see figures increase in terms of positive work for biodiversity.
I think it will go back to action touched on by colleagues earlier about engagement
with other landowners and working collaboratively across the borough to get buy -in from other
people where the priorities for their land might be many and various and biodiversity
might not yet be top of their list.
So I would suggest that that figure is to do specifically with designated sites.
I think more generally in terms of how we measure, there are a lot of standardized methods
for recording habitat quality and condition, and I would urge you to focus on that rather
than pure numbers.
I think the quality and condition of habitats across the borough is a much better indicator
of how resilient your communities of biodiversity species are going to be, and will actually
ensure that those species that are currently declining or threatened have a much greater
chance of success.
I think if we look at pure numbers, that can often be misleading.
But I think if we look at habitat, quality and condition markers, that might be an important
thing for colleagues to do.
And I'm happy to work with them outside of the meeting to share some more detailed suggestions
if that's useful.
Yeah, I think it's agreed.
That would be very useful to share.
So thank you, Ms. Soby.
Are there any more questions?
Or should we move on to our next speaker?
Okay.
Okay, so our next speaker is Ms. Petra Sabat -Davids from the Rivwondo Catchment Partnership.
Hello, good evening, and thank you very much for inviting me to present about the Rivwondo
Catchment Partnership and opportunities for collaborative working for benefit of biodiversity.
I work for South East Rivers Trust, which is one of the 63 rivers trust trusts in UK and Ireland.
It's a group of cross route environmental charities dedicated to restoring and protecting rivers in their local patches.
We work across 12 river catchments in the southeast of England from Basin Stowe to Dover.
And across our four teams, we work with environment and local communities through engagement,
building strong partnerships, using data and evidence, and educating mostly school children.
Next slide, please.
So in 2007, absolutely devastating pollution incident completely wiped out fish populations in the River Wandle.
It is one of the black dots in the Wandle history.
But as a result of that event, local communities and statutory authorities agreed that sustainable recovery
recovery needed to be based on robust scientific evidence, strong partnerships around the river,
and a long -term catchment plan. This event also luckily created the Wandle Trust
through voluntary funding, which was start of the Southeast Rivers Trust, but also start of the
restoration work on the river Wandle. Next slide, please.
So the River Wandle rises in Sutton and Croydon, flows through Merton and finally joins the
River Thames in Wandsworth. The catchment itself, so the area that we are looking at, is much bigger
as you can see on the right hand side picture. It covers a massive area of chalk
uh geology all the way to the south dance area. Next slide please.
Following the pollution event,
the Wandel Trust started working towards the Wandel vision and the Wandel plan and the catchment plan
actually consists of the vision document and also more technical document that outlines
challenges faced by the river, but also the series of tangible actions to deal with those challenges.
The vision was published in 2012, and more than 500 people and 50 different organizations took part in brainstorming what we would like the
to look like and surprise, surprise,
we all want the river ecosystem, which is healthy,
even though it exists in very much urbanized area
and faces all the pressures that that urbanized area brings.
In 2023, we managed to move that catchment plan
onto the online platform called Story Maps,
which is interactive platform that allows us
to show data on maps.
Pool in citizen science data show real -time information
both from environment agency,
but also from the citizen science projects.
And at the moment we have continuous water monitoring
sensors in the river that show the real -time information
online.
Next slide, please.
So through the catchment plan, we manage to actually show best practice what should be
happening on the river and how in very urbanized areas river could reach its best potential.
This is one of the examples from the Wandsworth area.
This is Ram Brewery Quarter.
I have to say this is project that Val is very familiar with.
And it actually shows improvements that can be done
in the very, very restricted and probably very uniform river channel
by creating terraces with vegetation, creating habitat.
The river is really important corridor for movement of species,
but also movement of people.
They're very lucky that we have Wandle Trail
running across pretty much the whole length of the river
with some of the gaps.
But ensuring that accessibility
and also creating corridors around the river
that allows connectivity with green open spaces
is definitely a way forward to improve biodiversity in the area.
These pictures actually show what we would consider
bare minimum that can be achieved through redevelopment and regeneration along the river.
It actually shows those terraces. There are other things that can be considered such as planters
used for bank softening, different floating structures including potentially eel tunnels
And that shows that even in the heavily urbanized area,
the wildlife and nature can have a place
and can create much nicer environment for people and nature.
Next slide, please.
This is also example of one of the strategic projects.
Again, Valerie will know very well about it.
This is a half -tied deer at the very confluence
of River Wandle and Thames.
It was a barrier for movement of fish and other species from the Thames itself into the upper parts of the Wandle.
Because this project was identified as one of the priorities in the Wandle catchment plan,
it was possible for a Wandswold team to use some of the development money.
Next slide, please.
And next, to actually remove that absolutely ginormous structure,
which didn't serve any practical purpose anymore.
Next slide, please.
And next, and create this beautiful vista that can be seen now,
where River Wandle is again connected with attempts.
This is only one of the structures that are blocking movement of species up the Wandle.
Other ones are EDF, which is just upstream, and Bell Lane,
Creek, which is again just upstream.
But looking at those structures, identifying potential for their removal
and identifying opportunities for banks of the link and increasing connectivity
of one dollar as a corridor is something that Catchment Partnership definitely can achieve.
We also work with other four in London.
We try to contribute to local nature recovery strategy plans and upcoming rivers.
The mayor's clean and healthy waterways program by ensuring that importance of
Wandle as a chalk stream and the wildlife corridor is recognized and included in those plans.
And I hope to say, Valerie now reminded me, talking about species recovery.
Wandle is one of the rivers where mink monitoring and trapping is taking place, including several locations in Wandsworth.
And we are hoping that we will be able to prove that Wandle is free of mink.
And with the help of the ENABLE team, there will be soon, we hope, a situation that we can reintroduce water walls to the river Wandle in a very similar way that we just did on the River Hoxman.
last year, which will again be followed by some additional introductions this year, actually
this July.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your presentation.
So we're just opening the floor now for any questions towards Ms. Davis about the Trust
and any...
Councilor Spong?
Yeah, the hogsmill was mentioned and first of all, as with the previous presentations,
100 % delighted with what's happening and very, very supportive of it.
But if you compare the areas around the mouth of the wandle, including one of the photographs
we were just looking at with the area around the mouth of the Hogsmill in Kingston.
I am delighted with everything but mildly disappointed that the information which is available at the Hogsmill
is not available at the mouth of the Wandle. If you go to Kingston town centre and look at the mouth of the Hogsmill
It's smaller actually than what's available at the mouth of the wandle, but there are
lots of information boards explaining what species are there and encouraging the public
to take an interest in what's available.
We seem not to be doing that, unless I've missed something, we seem not to be doing
that at the mouth of the wandle, at least just yet.
And maybe there's a reason, maybe it's too intrusive or it's dangerous or something
like that.
So I'd be interested in seeing us do something like that, copying what they do in Kingston,
if possible. And I wonder if there's any comment on that from the presenter.
I will just add, as a representative from catchment partnership,
There were historical initiatives run by Wandle Valley Regional Park Trust
to create signage and wayfinding around the River Wandle,
which was tied with the Wandle path.
And that kind of worked in some areas,
but at the time, inaccessibility of certain areas meant that it wasn't implemented everywhere.
At the moment, the Wandalwali Regional Park Trust is trying to pull together a new initiative
with local authorities being involved. I think some people in this room were present in the
that pathfinding, community engagement and information presentation along the whole length
of the Wandle can be unified and kind of presented in, I would say, an accessible and approachable way.
Can you talk a little bit more, sorry if I interrupt the questions, but can you talk
a little bit more about that project and the aims of the Wandle Valley River Partnership
trust as far as green routes is concerned and how burrows can come together to maybe
achieve more together than on their own?
Yes, I mean, information I have at the moment is very much limited. So under the
with the guidance from the National Trust,
counselors from Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton,
and Croydon gathered together with representatives
of larger NGOs and community groups
under the Wonder Wally Forum umbrella.
And for Wonder Wally Regional Park Trust Organization,
which is trying to create identity through connecting green and blue open spaces
and creating that identity of potential regional park in the area.
One Lukaszman partnership is participating in the work, although we are not part of the committee
of the trust, but at the moment we are jointly
pulling together a project that could be submitted
to the Green Roots Fund,
which was just announced yesterday,
which would allow feasibility studies
and consult public consultation on the ground
to see how that identity can be revived and recreated.
So that would be a lot of place making some targeted interventions on the ground in all of the boroughs that they're taking part.
But again, it all needs to be tied into local strategies and local aspirations.
So it is a lot of kind of juggling different balls, a lot of different aspirations.
but we're all working together for the benefit of green and blue open spaces and communities that use them.
Thank you. Are there any more questions for Ms. Soffits -David? Councillor Cook.
Yeah, thank you. Just very briefly, ancient history now, thank heavens, but
the pollution event, what was it and where? I hadn't heard about that before.
It was released of chemicals. I think it was from baddip and sewage treatment works.
So it was very dramatic, massive fish kill.
Fortunately, the funding that was supplied by Thames Water allowed for a significant river restoration work, followed by fish restocking.
so that fish population and general wildlife in the Wandel completely recovered.
So much so that in the 2019 classification,
it was kind of assessed that parts of the River Wandel were actually in good ecological condition.
That's not the case anymore for various reasons,
but I think the river itself is really suffering from the climate change and levels of obstruction
mean that impacts of high temperatures, lower water levels are really having great effect
on fish populations and populations of other animals that live in the Wandle.
We had unfortunately quite recent pollution event also you probably heard about the diesel spill that happened in February.
And as catchment partnership, we are actually trying to work with local stakeholders to pull together
more usable on the ground practical response plan that would allow environment agency but also other
organizations to be able to contact the right people in the right locations so that action
can take place much faster and more efficient than it did happen during that last pollution
incident but in any case, Wanda is an urban river. Everything that is built on our roads
and on our impermeable surfaces does end up in the river eventually. This is how our drainage
system is created and designed. So it is a river that's facing a lot of challenges.
Thank you. Since you mentioned the recent oil spill, would you say that because of the effort of your organization, would you say that the resilience to that oil spill has been a lot better when compared to the original devastating one that was years ago now?
The original devastating one was simply a chemical that had ability to literally kill all the wildlife in the area that was impacted.
I think it was kind of some, even bee bleach, I have to double check, I'll get back to you.
The diesel itself has very different chemical properties.
It floats at the surface,
so it will impact much more species
that do break the surface of water
for feeding or for breathing.
So it has much less impact on fish.
And I would say having more varied habitat,
having refugee on backwaters,
areas of low flow that's not right in the path of the main flow does increase resilience of the river.
So it creates kind of little pockets of habitats when things can get out of the harm's way when they need to.
Thank you. Councillor Boswell.
Councillor Sheila Boswell, Tooting Back Ward.
Thank you very much. It's extremely interesting and our rivers are so, so important.
With reference to what happened in February, I know that it was Croydon Council as well as Wandsworth that was affected.
But was there anything we could have done better in the response?
I can't really comment on response because there is investigation happening at the moment where this response is being reviewed and revalued.
I would just say a big thank you probably to National Trust and volunteers on the ground and people who are reporting everything to the environment agency,
who helped tremendously to highlight areas that were not dealt with immediately and highlight areas that need to be protected immediately.
So the devastating impacts would be much worse if there weren't local people on the ground
who really ranked the correct number and made sure that the environment agency is where they should be to take action.
So this is something that I would really recommend that it's kind of shared with general public
It's pollution incident phone numbers for the environment agency because that's best way to highlight what's happening and get rapid response
for 800 80 70 60
Yeah, all right, thank you for that and I think that could also be a potential line of inquiry when we do get
of the results of that investigation as to like how we as the power could have
handled the situation better and if there are any learning points.
Councillor White, do you want to clearly comment?
Yeah I do have the fact sheets from the Environment Agency about that so if anyone wants to have any more
information then please drop me a line and I'll send that back to you.
Thank you. Councillor Brooks, you were next.
Thank you very much. It was a similar question to Councillor Boswell's.
There's lots of industry along the river.
I just wondered what engagements is happening or ought to be happening to prevent future
incidents like that happening again and undoing all the hard work that people are doing.
As a partnership, we would very much like to be able to engage with all businesses and
premises that might have impact on the river. Unfortunately we're not able to do that.
So it's really what we try to do is give tools and informations to individual partners
and information so they can use their own network and their own channels
to share that information about responsible business practices.
Yeah, and I would say that the main thing is providing the environment agency with sufficient powers and funding so they can do their job properly to ensure that anything that's being released in the river should be there and it's treated properly.
And it's not anything that shouldn't be there. Also local authorities and their environmental health teams need proper funding to be able to do their jobs.
I think that's the main way of preventing future disasters.
Absolutely.
Councillor Caddy.
Thank you very much, Chair.
Is it okay to move on to sort of general key lines of inquiry across that sort of cover
both of the presentations that we've seen?
Is that okay if I make a final comment?
Yeah, okay.
Firstly, are there any more specific questions to either of the officers that are giving
the presentation?
Sara?
Thank you, Councillor Apps.
I just wanted to follow up on Councillor Brooks' question, actually, which I thought was interesting,
and ask what it is that holds you back from, you know, you sort of said you'd love to be
able to talk to businesses, but it's not possible.
And what holds you back from doing that, and is there work that we could do with sort of
with partner organizations like the council, you know, or other trade organizations that we could
reach out more to businesses and an industry along there. So really sort of try and interrogate that
a bit more and see if there's anything we can do about it. Yes, of course. So we have ability to
put information out there. What are different pathways? How things can end up in a river?
whether it's road trainage network,
which is directly connected to the river,
whether it's potential misconnections,
where things that should go into treated network.
So foul network ends up going straight into the surface network
or simply not following best practices when it comes to
and kind of making sure that anything that's toxic to the environment is properly stored,
properly used and properly disposed of.
So we can provide that information, put it on our web pages and also share it with our
partners.
However, we are funded to host catchment partnerships by the Environment Agency and for the one
So our annual funding is, if I can say,
seven and a half thousand pounds,
which really doesn't provide us with a lot of time
to do all that.
Luckily at the moment,
we have additional funding from Thames Water
that tops it up.
So it actually allows us to develop a new catchment plan
to create a new webpage and a story map
to have a dashboard with citizen science
and all the information about the Wandle to have interactive map with existing project and also
project opportunities and also to engage with for example local nature recovery network process
and make sure that the Wandle is recognized in those strategies but we simply don't have funding
that would allow us to go out and speak with businesses and explain you know if you're having
A diesel tank needs to be constructed in such and such way.
And if I have to be very, very honest,
there are much better institutions that are better experts in that kind of things.
How we can work better together?
I would definitely say sharing information.
When we work with general public, there is a program such as Yellowfish
that actually highlights that road trains and gullies drain into the river. So it is something
that people need to be aware of and maybe it's something that businesses also need to be much
more aware of. But I would say if everybody sticks to the rules there would be much less problems.
But it is basically raising awareness about how network is built and what the consequences are.
because nobody does those things on purpose.
Thank you very much.
I think we've had a lot of questions now
and I feel like we should start moving on
to more of the key lines of inquiry.
Councilor Osborne, did you have one last point to make?
Okay, so starting off, you know,
we might have a lot of different ideas.
So we've already heard briefly from Councilor Osborne
and cancer apps about sort of how we're going to measure
improvements in biodiversity and also if we want to include
some form of targets.
So I was thinking maybe we could start off by seeing
if there were any more questions or points
from any members like about those specifically
and we can try and get a few key lines of inquiry from that
and then we can move on to another subject
if people are meanable to that.
So okay, so yeah, so moving on to the targets here
and measuring, Councillor Jeffries.
Thank you, Chair, Councillor James Jeffries,
Thamesfield Ward.
You'll have to forgive me, this may be something
that's relevant also for the next paper,
but I just wanted to touch on the annual number of trees
that are planted.
Obviously, a great number achieved.
Certainly wouldn't suggest getting rid of that target,
that's really something important to aim for,
But obviously, if we are then losing 200, 500, 1 ,000,
however much that might be, then that's not the whole picture.
And it's a great start for a leaflet, whoever's in charge.
But I think it would be helpful.
I don't know if there is any way to measure the actual stock
number of trees, because we obviously
want to increase the stock each year, you know, the rate is sort of less important
as it were, that actual stock figure is the most important point. I don't know if
it's even possible to do that, if it's possible to sort of estimate the total
or whether there is some form of proxy, I don't know, maybe bulk of trees in a
certain area, but I think that would be a more, from a public policy perspective, a
a more meaningful figure that if we could possibly track,
it would be great to.
Thank you, Councillor Jeffries.
Yeah, as you see in our KPIs, we have a stat
for the amount of trees total planted,
but then there's also, you're in that,
a fair chunk of them are replanted trees
that had been felled, and then others were gained trees,
and we all want to see a higher net gain
year on year.
I don't know if Mr. Edie or Mr. Dreyer,
you wanted to comment on that point?
Is it all right if we answer that with my tree expert
under the next question, would that be all right?
Yes.
That's absolutely fine.
Okay, so trying to get back to the measurements
and the eDNA, we had Councilor Osborne previously
mention in the point about the Natural History Museum
how they use eDNA, which is a different
measurement technique.
So it sounds like one potential avenue could be
that we get the Natural History Museum
to come make a presentation to officers
and have them be involved in the design of the strategy.
Councilor Caddy, do you want to come in on a similar point?
Yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean,
it's sort of a related point,
but we've obviously got universities in and near the borough
and I wonder whether the biology
or natural science departments of those universities
might be interested in developing programs
to sort of monitor biodiversity or look at biodiversity,
that might be an area to look at as well.
Yeah, definitely.
So, yeah, it seems pretty unanimous
that we'd like to see, not for history,
you see them as well as some local universities
come in and try and see if there are better,
more efficient ways to measure it,
if it's possible for us to use eDNA
or another measuring technique in order to
to get a good accurate picture.
So that sounds like a good starting point.
Councilor Apps.
Do we want to see the increase in citizen science as well
to help us build up more of a picture
which will help us developing what targets
are appropriate as well?
The other thing that I'm very interested in
is how we prioritize either,
or perhaps they should come in separately actually,
I was going to say, but how we prioritize native varieties
and also look at climate resistant varieties
and how we balance the use of the two as well
and how we consider that.
I don't know if that would be under target setting.
That might be slightly separate.
Yeah, that could potentially be under target.
And if we want to see more specific goals of increase
and species, then we could also say the increase of native and non -native as well.
Councillor Osborne, could you comment on a similar point?
Yeah, just to add, I think, to Councillor Caddy's point about bringing in a local university,
for example, or something like that.
There are other organisations I think we could draw into the process.
There's the various organisations.
we've already got involved with the Council through the Open Spaces Forum
and indeed I think that could be expanded. I think there are other
organizations out there that could be drawn into the kind of discussions that
we have with the Open Spaces Forum already. I'm particularly interested in
what the Friends of the Different Commons are doing at the moment, for
example, trying to... we're looking at green corridors but so are they, trying to
find out ways of connecting up, so tuting and ones with common and the commons in between.
And maybe even using people's back gardens and the facilities that are provided by ordinary
citizens as a way of extra public engagement to create these green ways through the borough.
I think there are all sorts of potential elements.
We might have to negotiate a little bit with Lambeth about their cemeteries in Wandsworth,
for example, because they've got some big open space.
And cemeteries are a vital and very important source of biodiversity across a borough like
Wandsworth.
But I think it's worth looking at what they're doing and working with them as part of this
process.
So it's citizen science or public engagement,
and it's the greenway targets that we're looking at expanding.
So there's all sorts of potential there, I think.
OK, yeah, so yeah, it sounds like the use
of the academic side, not just the museum and the universities,
and then also the citizen side, like our local groups
that we want to give more power to.
And do you want to come in?
I've jotted down a summary of what I think I've captured some of your comments and key
lines of inquiry tonight.
So I'll go through them and then hand back to the chair and any that you don't agree
with etc. we can come back to.
So I've got investigate the use of EDNA and potential partnerships with natural history
museums and other academic institutions locally.
Consider establishing targets specifically in relation to habitat management and condition.
Promote the use of information boards, signage and displays on the mouth of the wandle and
beyond.
And consider, as was said in the presentation, tying this into a local strategy and aspirations.
Investigate the learning points with regards to the February 2025 incident with a view
to how the council can help in crisis response in future.
Facilitate the dissemination of advice with regards
to responsible business practice where possible.
Promote increase in citizen science and resident
and community engagement regarding biodiversity.
Consider the expansion of greenway targets
and explore the promotion and balance
of both native and climate resistant species.
Thank you, Joe.
Thank you. That was a very eloquently put summary. We have a few comments for Councillor Caddy.
Can I just add one? I do think it's really important that we also think about the benefit to school children and children who are living in the borough
and how they can benefit from being out in nature, learning about biodiversity and kind of generate a genuine, kind of lifelong love of nature.
So it would be really good to see some kind of key target on how many school children are engaged, how many schools are engaged
And I think every school should be getting involved in this.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Like building on that, were there any other similar
comments on sort of schools or like our public institutions
that we're running, such as schools,
and social care, that we'd want to build on?
Is that all right?
Do you want to comment?
Yeah, just around all of those organizations,
I mean, if we create a map of the area
and how these different areas can be connected
so that the various different organizations
can look at the areas that they're particularly
interested in and see how they can be mapped together.
I think that might be something we could look at.
Yeah, that ties in with Council Osborn's point
about the sort of walkways and how we want continuous paths
for species to migrate across the borough.
Okay, so do we...
Perhaps let's not forget the tree point, which I think is the driver who's going to come back up.
Next item I think.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, he was going to...
Yeah, he was going to...
Yeah, we need to...
Councillor Lawless.
Hello, Councillor Lawless, Tutu Broadway.
Just on the crisis response thing, can we make sure that that covers all areas and doesn't
just focus on the rivers?
Because I don't know if we're like a few months away from some wildfire that devastates the
local environment or something, but just making sure it covers all of it because it would
be terrible for all this good work to go to waste with some sort of natural disaster.
Councillor Brooks.
Thank you, Chair.
I think as we build the strategy as well, obviously we're at the beginning point now,
we need to be mindful of how this strategy fits alongside other things the council are doing elsewhere,
in planning, licensing, and things like that.
Last committee we were discussing the events policy, and we wouldn't want to put ourselves in a situation
where we were putting all our ambitions forwards in the biodiversity strategy,
whilst potentially not recognizing how other parts
of the council's agenda and priorities might undermine
what we're trying to achieve here.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a very good point.
And also, on the point of planning as well,
we want to be a member of the planning committee.
We see a target called biodiversity net gain,
where it's how much new development actually contributes
to improving biodiversity.
And it would be, I think, it'd be helpful as well
if we had some kind of large overarching target
for the borough and how much we are gaining,
how much we are gaining in biodiversity approach
in especially parts of the borough that are a lot grayer,
that have a lot of tall buildings.
there are some parts in my ward as well,
there's one example where it can be a little bit
of a concrete jungle and how can we make more inroads
into that and get more wildlife into that area.
So I don't know if maybe Mr. Trahey or,
oh, Councilor White, yeah, I've got some insight on that.
And then you're back on me, Jamie.
Yeah, on that, I think it's very important to listen
to local people and understand, you know,
the various demands on open spaces, but equally we need a balance in our open spaces so that
people can enjoy the wide variety of opportunities that a green space gives you, sports and recreation
and things like that as well. But yeah, I mean, we really enjoy our commons and we don't
want a situation out of a boroughs that's
to endure some residents enjoyed.
But certainly, we like the way our commons are
and our parks are.
But equally, we got to make sure that everybody is involved
in that, and they can bring their own satisfaction
to the commons as well.
Thank you.
Councillor Boswell.
Thank you very much, Chair.
I just want to make a suggestion with respect, and I know it's the first time that we've
had a paper where we're looking at lines of inquiry, but we're over an hour in now, and
I think that some of this detail that we're going into now, which is very interesting,
would be better done in outside committee.
Otherwise, we're not going to get onto the other papers.
Thank you.
That's okay.
Well, unless there's any more closing remarks that we need to add, I think we've got a very
summary there, we'll see in the minutes as well the key lines are inquiring if
if one of your points you feel hasn't been adequately addressed then we can
make sure to get that added in for the future plan. So I want to, so in that case
I will draw this to a close and thank our speakers for their presentations.
They're really helpful and I feel like we had a really good positive discussion on

4 Tree Management and Resident Engagement (Paper No. 25-204)

that. Okay, alright, thank you. So with that done, that concludes paper number three. So now
we're on to paper number four, which is the tree management
and resident engagement paper, which is number 25 -204.
So this will be similar, probably fair,
shorter than the biodiversity one.
But Councillor White, you wanted to say a couple words
before we go on to Mr. Traer with this presentation.
Yeah, yeah, just that I think tree policy is really, really,
I think the information and the communication with residents again is really important.
I think the amount of information that residents can bring forward on biodiversity from the
previous paper would be equalled as well by trees.
But I think that more information needs to be made available to residents so they can
understand what is happening with our trees and why some have to be removed and at what
the point they can be removed, and their involvement of keeping those trees healthy as well.
So, I say, once again, this is really, really important and hopefully we can again
address it in a way that we've addressed that other paper so we can come up with some really, really good ideas.
Thank you, Councillor White.
Mr. Chair, would you like to introduce this?
Yes, thank you very much, Chair.
So this is a similar item, but
On this occasion, we're asking you to help us in identifying key lines of inquiry in relation to service improvement rather than the development of a policy.
And so really what we wanted to do is just give you an overview of what's happened since we've brought the tree team in house.
So what more we've got planned on the improvement journey.
and then we have a couple of guest speakers who are taking a pan -london
perspective and then a local perspective from the Wandsworth tree
wardens who are looking after trees and are volunteering their time to look
after trees locally. And then again at the end there's an opportunity
to infer development of key lines of inquiry. So just a very quick look at you
know some of the things that took place last financial year before the
team moved in -house. That gives you some of the keyline stats there. But what
have we done since April? So the team came in -house, we migrated the website
content across from enable and made a number of initial improvements to make
that content stronger and add some bits that we we wanted to add. And one of the
things that's really successful is making joint inspections, doing joint
inspections with highways, which wasn't something that happened before, really
thinking about how we identify locations for new trees jointly, how we think about
pavement repairs jointly, etc. We've started to improve the notices that go
on trees just so that people understand a bit more about why we're having to
sometimes fell trees because none of us want to do this. And then we've started a
review of that integration between the highways and the trees process that's
from felling to replanting and different people have to do things in between. For
But this year, we want the team to settle in and start to do quite a bit of improvement
work.
And there are some of the key areas that we're going to focus on that you can see there,
and I'll kind of unpack these a little bit.
So we're going to move, we're going to introduce some reports online that give more detail
on why we have to remove trees.
So with pictures that show why and explain what the problem is with the tree, we want
to link those to the notices on the trees.
We want to then make sure that stakeholders receive those.
So as ward counselors, people would receive those
so that when residents make inquiries,
counselors can point them to that information.
And then we've also, I understand,
already made live tree -based planting guidance.
So that's if residents want to plant around the bottom
of trees.
There have been some challenges in the past
around erection of little fences and things like that,
which can lead to trip hazards.
And we've issued some guidance and developed that jointly
with highways colleagues.
So that's just some of the things there.
Again, the website content, we're making some more changes to the online form.
At the moment, that's being done from the learning that we've already had in the last
few months.
And we're going to move on to the same back office system as the highways department to
make things much more integrated.
We've got a couple of major procurements underway, which we're going out to the market for, or
are out to the market for.
And that's for TreeWorks, that's the first one.
and then the second one is then supply and aftercare of trees.
And then one of the other things that we've recently done in partnership with the tree wardens
is they help us with, and I'm sure Susie will talk about this to an extent,
help us with monitoring the health of young trees.
And we've moved that to an online format for them, which gets the data to us much more quickly,
but it also reduces the admin burden for the tree wardens in the process.
And then the last thing I wanted to touch on is taking much more data informed planting approach.
That's using intelligence that's out there such as the climate risk map.
And then something that the GLA has which is the canopy cover for London, which helps us identify locations.
We've also got our tree stock mapped, which kind of gets to a bit on streets,
not every single tree in parks, but in woodland, but on streets.
So, but this gives us canopy cover, which also covers other people's land,
so we can really think about where we prioritize investment.
And at that point, I'm going to hand over to our first guest speaker, if that's all right, chair.
So we have Andy Tipping.
Good evening, I'm Andy Tipping. I manage, I'm the trees and woodland service manager
at the London Borough of Barnet, where I have been for 29 years. It's not only tree time
and I remember the guy from Westminster only retired about four years ago and he'd been
there since 1974. So we tend to stick around, we want to see the fruits of our labour. I've
I'll take a nice briefly to, so I'm an edge barner and have done for some time.
And really, I need to, I'll explain what the LTOA is and why it's so important.
And then you can ask me any questions that you fancy.
London Tree Office Association was called in 1982, all London boroughs and members.
And what we really are, I think, is a support network.
If anyone's writing a tree contract, for instance, they'll contact me or a policy and they'll contact me and I'll just give it, you know, give it to them and set it down in a puppet realm anyway.
And we support each other. You don't reinvent the wheel every time. And there was that. And we all face the same difficulties and issues, I think, every London borough.
It might be nuances, but really that's what happens.
And if someone's come up with a fix,
then they'll speak to someone who's just gone
for a couple of years of trying to work it out
and get the information from them.
So that's what the LTA does.
It's very important.
I mean, nationally, we're looked upon as,
and remember, 90 % of all the trees that impact on people
are managed by councils, really. So we manage the biggest tree stock in the country, certainly
in London.
And so, yeah, we just produce lots of documents in the north where I manage. I mean, building
subsidence is the biggest risk that we have. So we manage our trees accordingly with regard
to building risk.
Yes, so it's thing is really important. But there within that, what you've got there,
then bullet points, your tree stop management. So all of our trees are recorded on easy tree,
which I think Montserrat does have as well, which is an excellent database. Very, very
helpful people who work there. Contractors. Contract management is easily the most difficult
part of the job. So I heard you're going through a new procurement. Best of luck with that.
I'm really happy works out for you. If it doesn't look out for you. I did a presentation
at the National Tree Office conference that 10 years ago. The first time I did and I did
it all about contract management and you know, my concluding thing was that if you got good
contractors in place, then your job's great. You love it. If you got bad contracts in place,
then then your job's hell and you really don't enjoy coming to work every day. So you're
doing is fighting with contractors. Tree and planting departments, I don't manage tree
preservation orders or development sites at Barnet. We have a separate planning department
who do that. Both the green spaces department that I work with has its own biodiversity
officer and so does the planners as well. They've got their own biodiversity officer
now. The tree removal process that you've got there, I mean we remove a thousand trees
a year in Barnet about 500 sorry 500 trees a year and we plant 1000. So we plant 500
of the trees that previously been removed and 500 new and that's based on data and if
you wanted me to share our policy with you I could show you some data led examples about
why we planted certain parts of Barnet mostly to do with air quality, urban heat, index
the multiple deprivation flood risk and public engagement. And you've got a picture there of our
portal, which if you like, I'll share and I'll navigate around with you just to give you a little
bit, because obviously I know what it does. Is that okay if I share my screen?
Hi, sorry, I was just wondering how long do you think it would be to quickly give the
show around? Okay, if it's a couple of minutes, that's fine. Yeah. All right. I'll share my
screen. So this is our public facing portal that anyone can see. We get about 50 hits
today on this and it has a link to our policy, it gives you whatever, we've got £1 .55 billion
worth of trees. We did an i -Tree report which gives you the annual benefits of that our
trees provide, £2 .39 million, carbon stored, sequestered, pollution run -off, pollution
removal sorry, and run -offs. But this is the most important bit and I'm sure this is the
that most people enjoy the most. So this is a map of all the trees in Barnet and I'll
just look at some random trees somewhere. All our trees get popped up and then in here
yeah we've got horse chestnut tree here it's got a caveat value of 194 000 pounds. We inspected it
2021 so it's due an inspection and then it has things like the eco benefits so this tells you
exactly what this tree does every year it gives about 100 pounds worth of eco benefits we've got
three and a half three point three five tons of carbon stored and all of that stuff and then it
has an inquiry button so you can get in contact with us directly uploads photographs if you wish
and then submit. Now I thought this would be used far more by citizen science like you've alluded to
here. You know that the people would want to know about these trees and certainly again going back
to the eco -benefits that they provide. But we haven't really been approached. It's only been
about 18 months it's been live I think and most of the work on this was carried out by Easytree
And it wasn't expensive because I think we were the first council that I approached to
do because this is all our existing data. We didn't really need to do a great deal.
They just took it and put it together and then we published it. So something, you know,
when you're talking about your tree data, how do you make it accessible to members of
the public? This is a really simple way of doing it. I think it cost about three and
half grand to do this. And I would say we are getting about 50 hits a day. So there
you go. That set up you very quick.
Great. Thank you. That was really interesting. Were there any questions for Mr. Tippin before
you move on to the next speaker?
Okay, I just wanted to ask one quick question to the officers.
Do we have access to that kind of data that we could also, if we wanted to move to that
online portal, would we be able to quickly access that data and get it set up in a similar
way?
So that's the software package we're currently using and we'll be looking to migrate.
So we need to explore whether that sort of functionality exists.
So we're looking to migrate to the same software that is used in Richmond and used across highways
as well.
So we'll be exploring that as part of the conversations we're having at the moment with
the suppliers.
Great.
Thank you.
Okay.
With that, I'm going to thank you very much for that presentation.
And then we'll be on to our next speaker, which is Susie Lloyd.
Good evening. We're really pleased to be invited. I'm the chair of the Wandsworth
Tree Wardens. Start off with a little bit about us. The moment we have 79 tree warden
volunteers which are pretty well spread across the borough. We are independent of the council.
The council used to have a tree warden scheme.
So would you mind getting a little bit closer to your mic just so members of the public gathering,
councils can hear you a bit better?
The council did have a tree warden scheme but closed it.
So myself and someone called Andrew Wills set up a tree warden scheme.
So ours is the only truly independent tree warden scheme in the country, which is not actually run by the council.
We are members of the tree council, we register with the tree council.
We fundraise and
all the money we get is from our volunteer members through donations.
We work with the council tree team, including monitoring the health of young trees, which we're doing at the moment.
We've just embarked on the 24 -25 young tree survey.
So basically, we're monitoring trees really over the first three years, how they're doing.
And we report on that on the new online form, which Thorsten and Liam have sent us.
A few teething troubles, but it's really working well.
We also very importantly comment on planning applications.
The comment earlier from somebody about how many trees
do you plant each year and how many trees have you got.
Well, we'd like to know exactly how many trees we've got
and how many trees are planted each year.
In other words, what is the total tree stock?
I think the important thing is how many trees do we lose to development every year?
And that is something which we've never been given information on, which we think is vital.
We submit a lot of objections to the removal of trees where we feel it's unnecessary.
We also want to talk about what the developer is planting.
Earlier the gentleman before referred to the CAVAC system.
I don't know if you know what the CAVAC method is,
where you calculate the worth of a tree, the value,
and what you're really calculating is the value to the environment, to the local population.
So if you cut down a very mature tree with its tree canopy and plant ten little trees,
those ten little trees won't show up on the tree canopy for possibly thirty years.
So they're not adding anything in terms of carbon capture or things like that.
So this is, I think, a really important thing for
people to understand about your planting trees.
But what value are those trees, and when are they going to contribute something?
So our aim is to promote for public benefit the conservation, protection, and
improvement of the environment through the planting care, nurture,
and cultivation of trees throughout the borough.
We very much aim to raise public awareness of the many benefits that trees in the urban
environment provide and the unique hardship that city trees are subject to.
And that means obviously Liam and the tree team are looking at what species are now being
planted.
So this is about the right tree in the right location.
Our principal focus is on street trees, those trees which are planted in the public realm,
mainly residential streets and roads and to a lesser extent, trees and parks,
commons and new public urban spaces. So what works well? Well, the thing we're
absolutely most delighted about is that the tree team has been brought back in -house.
That is really important because you are now sitting here discussing trees, discussing
what the strategy will be, discussing what your priorities are.
Because before that was part of the outsourcing and it made no sense to us whatsoever.
So for us this is an incredibly important time and we want to thank you for bringing
the trees home. Also obviously the other thing about bringing the tree team, the
trees back in house, is that councillors are elected directly by residents and so
you have an invested and emotional interest in the area because you live
here. Whereas when you appoint a managing agent, they don't live here, it's a business arrangement.
It is for us the trees are not just a business arrangement, they're where we live, they're where
you take your children to school, they're where you shop and therefore it's about how does your
urban environment look, how does it feel, how do you enjoy it. What we can see is some visible
changes starting to take place and that is something we find incredibly exciting.
So what could be improved? I think a clear vision for trees that everyone can
get behind because people may not be aware of it but actually you're passing
trees every day right everywhere you go when you're waiting for the bus when
you're driving. So the trees are part of your experience, whether you like it or not, when
you live in Wandsworth. So what is that vision? Because what we are, as the Wandsworth Tree
Wardens, is we've tried to be for the tree team, is the eyes and ears of the trees in
because we have 79 tree wardens. I think there are four tree officers.
So we have people reporting all the time, looking all the time,
crying when they see a tree chopped down, upset when it's dying for lack of water.
And therefore the more people across the borough, the more you heighten and make people aware,
They will be looking out for the trees as well.
And the reason it works is because people are very aware of the trees in their own local
streets and that's how you protect them.
So we would like to see a long -term measurable strategy which has targets which can actually
be measured where there is accountability. And we also value very much wider benefits of trees and
education. And someone spoke earlier about how important it is to educate young people.
We ran a little tree initiative where we had some tree wardens go out to every primary school
and encourage them to plant an orchard so that children could see trees growing and understand that it could provide food.
So I just want to say that we feel now very hopeful that things will really start to happen. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your speech.
We are now, I'm very conscious that we are running a little over, so if the question
directly relates to a key line of inquiry that you want to include, then you can ask
it, but otherwise I think we should get through to establishing the key lines.
So Councillor Apps.
Yeah, thank you very much.
So I get lots of complaints about trees generally, because you tend to hear about people when there's an issue.
But they come from all sorts of directions.
So sometimes it's because of trees being removed.
Sometimes it's because of trees overhanging, houses, gutters, gardens.
That can be an issue for people too, where there's very large trees in residential streets.
And I'm also very conscious that I remember one summer that was particularly dry, a bit
like this one, going around and trying to water all the trees in the chef's real estate,
which is near where I live, and sort of really struggling and becoming aware of how few,
although they had their little bags around them to encourage people to water them, how
rarely that was done.
and really thinking about in terms of inquiries, I love the website and the sort of fact that
it gave benefits, so encouraging people to know about the benefits of the trees in their
area as well as kind of obviously having some of the downsides of having like a very large
tree in your gutter, for example, and that but also perhaps giving more information to
people about empowering them to actually sort of help trees in their areas,
particularly young trees, with growth and sort of making sure that we're sharing that information more.
Maybe want to do things like QR codes next to trees so that people can look up the information easily as well.
But I am concerned.
I just wanted to raise a point that a resident raised with me yesterday,
Which was about the right to light when it comes to when it comes to maintaining trees in the borough and to make sure that we?
Are balancing the needs of residents in their homes as well as making sure that we're looking after the trees really well. Thank you
Thank you
Councilor Osborne, did you want to come next?
Yes, it strikes me that an interesting line of inquiry that we should consider might be how we can use the tree wardens as part of
this discussion we've had already about public engagement and citizen science and
I think that would be important but I have a question a direct and practical
question on that how do you recruit your tree wardens where do they come from
summer counselors and it was in fact counselor Sarah McDermott who was very
supportive of us when we set up and it really helped our success. I just want to
say that we do have Councillors, Tree Wardens at this present time. How do we
recruit? Well the first thing we did was we needed a website so that is the only
time we have got money from the count we bid for a grant and we got a grant to
five thousand to build a website which we are upgrading now because the
platform is wonky. So once we had the website up, then people, I think they were just googling
Tree Wardens stuff, and we started to get people joining. Then the council actually
advertised us in their newsletter, Sarah speaking to them. And then in 2019, the ones with Tree
the Council brought in a new civic award, which was an environmental civic award, and
that award went to the Wandsworth Tree Wardens. So we were delighted to have it. As a result
of that award, the Council again advertised our services and that really helped. I think
I think one of the other things that really brought us to a lot of people's attention,
someone mentioned watering there, is in the early spring of 2020, just after lockdown,
you remember, it was very hot and trees were in huge distress.
So we came up with a watering plan and we came up with a watering scheme for our wardens.
And some of you may have seen these notices on the trees, which is what we designed these.
We printed them, we paid for them, and then we went out and every tree which looked distressed,
we hung a sign on saying, please water me. And the London Tree Officers were so impressed,
They did contact us to copy this.
So and that was a way of engaging people and also
making people take responsibility
for the trees in their street, because that's
when it works really well.
Because water is so heavy, you cannot carry it for long.
So you have to.
Well, the normal recommendation is eight gallons
when you water.
Now, you can't trot far with eight gallons of water.
So, if you've got people in your street who are taking care of specific trees, then they get watered.
I mean, we were supplementing the watering of enables the contractors.
I have to say, we weren't convinced they were watering the street trees.
because I've lived here a very long time and I've never seen one single water butt.
So just, the thing is that when you have so few tree offices, it's very difficult for them to monitor,
you know, when you've got right across the borough.
So, and we felt, and I think we know, that we saved a lot of trees that year.
So every year we do watering to boost the watering
that the contractors do.
This year, I don't know if Liam wants
to maybe talk about the change in some of the watering
practices.
But yesterday I got a lot of distressed calls from wardens.
We have a Google group.
So all 79 wardens are on the Google group going out,
upset, sending me photos of leaves curling.
So we will start to water now because it is so dry.
And we will start to put the notices out again,
once I've spoken to you.
Thank you for that.
And I think you raised a good point there
about decentralizing a bit the sort of water
and the maintenance of the trees,
trying to get more local people who can eat more easily,
access the trees I think that's a very good point ways I before I took any more
council Jeff he's made a point in the last paper about biodiversity so did
officers want to quickly come back on that hi my name is Liam Hudson on the
art manager for Wandsworth in terms of the number of trees we have an increase
in the numbers that we've got so we know we've got around 60 ,000 trees recorded
on our database. For street trees we can get that number very exact because
street trees in a pit so there's either a tree or there's not a tree. In terms of
the exact number it starts to get hard on a lot of the green spaces in some of
our bigger housing estates in the sort of scrubby and woodland areas so to
record every tree in a woodland is impossible. So a lot of those are
plotted as groups or areas and where that sort of comes through in the
reporting of the felling numbers, if there's a, say a cell -zone astride that's
popped up next to the bins on an estate, we've never recorded it before, it's not
being counted in the 60 ,000, then we have to remove it. Obviously we wouldn't
replant that because it's popped up by itself, it's growing between the paving
and stuff like that, so that counts as a removal, but it's not really being
accounted for in the tree population. Yeah, so in terms of getting the exact
numbers on the green spaces and housing, it's very difficult. On the trees we can
do it exactly. There has been an increase in the tree population on the streets.
Even with these extra tree removals, the number of trees removed is still
being less than the number of trees planted. So the overall number is going
up. It's probably going up more than what we think it is, but it's very difficult
to record exactly.
Yeah, thank you for that. One point I wanted to raise, and I'm sure a lot of
councillors have got emails about it, is when we have residents getting in
they're upset because the tree's been felled and they weren't given due notice.
So I feel like that would also be an important line of inquiry to add that,
for instance, if a tree is found to be diseased, we have information online,
possibly pictures of the disease that are showing this.
And then also maybe on the tree, if we're saying that we're choosing to fell it,
we have a poster on it for a week or two weeks saying that this tree's going to be removed for this reason.
We have a QR code underneath it, so it's not that residents are just waking up to see
their tree failed and they have no idea why.
I think that's an important line of inquiry.
Did anyone else have any comments on that?
Because I know it's one that the councilors get a lot.
Is there anything else that they want to see in terms of the communication with residents when it comes to trees?
Councilor Apps?
If there are issues with mapping our existing trees, perhaps we could ask residents to help with that.
we have a very good way of reporting.
You can use three words or other ways
of mapping it with coordinates.
So I think we could, if we do,
if our reporting is not as good as Barnett's,
I think there's ways to bring that up.
Thanks.
So I think you've got a list of more key lines of inquiry,
so maybe read them out and see if there's any more additions
that anyone wants to say, and then we can move on.
As last time members I've just got a summary here.
So key lines of inquiry are to promote the benefits of trees on the website including
additional information to empower people to aid and protect trees, especially young trees.
Possible exploration of inclusion of QR codes on trees to provide specific information with
regards to that tree.
Explore a closer working relationship with the tree wardens and other community groups
as part of wider efforts to increase public participation
and engagement.
Explore encouraging local residents and groups
to water and care for trees in their locality.
Enhance information on the website regarding tree disease
and the reasons a tree might be required to be felled.
And potential to look at seeking community engagement
to help map the trees in the borough.
Thank you, Chair.
Sorry, can you use that again?
Thank you, Chair. We need to make sure as a specific line of inquiry is improved communication about tree felling.
Okay, so...
That's what you said.
Yeah, the point I made with the specifics and also just generally as well, are there other ways that we can improve that?
Were there any more quick points?
Also, I think the Chair of the Tree Wardens asked for the number of trees that are felled by development or as a result of development and we talked about that.
Yeah, no, that's a really good one as well,
because we can then see the impact of our planning policies.
Were there any more points, any more key lines of inquiry
that wanted to be added?
Is that something that you could add to the email?
Sorry, you can't hear me?
No, go ahead.
Okay, so are there any more from members of the committee?
No, okay.
So, with that, we can move on to the next item of the paper.

5 Outcome of the Women and Girls Sports Task and Finish Group Work (Paper No. 25-205)

So again, thank you for our speakers, for your informative presentations.
It's really helpful.
Thank you.
.
Okay, we're moving on to item number five now, which is the outcome of the Women and
Goers Sports Task and Fitness Group work, paper number 25 -205.
With that, we have Councillor Julie Gasser, the cabinet member for children, as well as
Rebecca Towers, who will be leading us into this.
So take it away.
Okay.
Good evening everybody and thank you very much for allowing me to come and talk. It's not my committee anymore
It's lovely to see everybody and there's bits of work that I was so passionate about when and when we started them
And I just wanted to continue
So delighted to be here with these wonderful women who have helped write this plan. So I've not been involved
It's but councilor and Angie Liana that's been chairing. There's been loads of volunteers when I've got a whole long list
It's probably not time to go through them all but thank you to all the women that have been involved with this
mainly voluntary and some of our offices as well,
and the naval officers, but women gave up their time
because this is such an important issue.
So thank you and you're gonna meet three amazing women
this evening.
I think we're on to the next slide.
So you will remember the Wandsworth Moves Together
strategy and plan that we presented last year.
It's going really well, there's all sorts of things
happening, we're working our way through the action plan.
One element of it was active people.
So how do we help all of our people get active?
And we did, we were very aware that women and girls in our borough
are not as active as the men and the boys.
And it's not unique to Wandsworth, it's everywhere.
So we need to really look into this.
And the best way to look into it is to ask the people themselves.
So we set up this group, Juliana has been chairing it,
and this is the report that they are presenting
and Rebecca Dowers is gonna help present.
And thank you very much to everybody that's been involved.
Thank you, Judy.
So yes, it's been a really lovely process,
a co -design plan, truly co -design with all of these,
the women that we have with us today, but many, many more.
And there's a plethora of excitement
about women's sport this year.
and it's a really good time to be doing this work.
So we've got the Women's Rugby World Cup,
we've got the Women's Euros,
we've got the first women's tournament at Queens,
we've just had that for 52 years.
So we're riding on a wave of excitement about women's sport
and the profile of that is really rising.
And the women and girls in our borough
need to be able to take advantages
of all of those opportunities that we have in the borough.
So this ranges from removing no ballgame signs
on housing estate green spaces, making it easier for all children to kick a ball around or throw a ball around,
and through to elite sporting pathways for women and girls, which is, you know, so from one end to the other.
And we have people who have a personal experience of young women who have done really, really well in sports.
So we came together. We've had an amazing journey together.
Just next slide, please, Harry.
Five sessions and then coming to this meeting being the icing on the cake,
so presenting our ideas.
So it's been a really fabulous journey.
And then the themes, you have the seven themes in your report
with all the projects that go alongside those or within those themes.
And we're not going to talk about those except for the ones
that our guests want to speak about.
So I am going to hand straight over to lovely Anne -Marie, who is next to me.
Thank you.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Anne -Marie Ormond, and I'm currently serving as the Physical Education Specialist
at Sacred Heart Primary School in the heart of Battersea.
Prior to this role, I worked with Wands of Sports Development for 20 years, where I had
the privilege of leading several initiatives focused on social inclusion and increasing
female participation in sports.
As a lifelong resident of Wands of Myself, I'm deeply connected to this community.
I'm also a proud mother of two children who have started their sporting journeys in local Wands of Clubs and schools,
and both of whom have gone on to represent their country in their respective sports.
And they have joined me in the gallery tonight as adults now.
I am truly excited to be part of this group and contribute to shaping this plan.
Having witnessed firsthand the immense benefits that sport and physical activity bring to girls,
I'm equally aware that the significant drop -off rates in participation between primary and secondary PE.
Encouraging lifelong habits of physical activity is vital for all women,
and I'm committed to ensuring that we help foster these habits early on.
At Sacred Heart Primary School, we are incredibly fortunate to have a group of enthusiastic and dedicated girls in PE.
We were recently honored to receive the Equal Access for Girls Award for the second consecutive
year, which speaks to the commitment that we have to providing equal opportunities in
sports.
However, I believe there is a substantial gap in the transition to secondary school
where girls often face unique challenges such as hormonal changes, body image concerns,
and perceptions of physical weakness.
Through this plan, I think we can implement targeted programs that not only support girls
in navigating these challenges, but also provide them with the access to both female only as
well as mixed gender PE lessons. By promoting female role models in sports and leadership
positions, we can empower girls, instilling in them and the understanding that healthy
competition is important, but the primary focus should always be that we have the joy
of being active. Additionally, I strongly believe that this is crucial to introduce
girls to the wealth of career opportunities within the sporting industry. Women are significantly
underrepresented in this field and it's imperative that we highlight these opportunities from
an early age to inspire the next generation of female leaders in sports. Like I said,
I have a personal connection to this cause. I attended Sacred Heart Primary School myself,
as did my children, and I've made it a priority to create a strong foundation for girls' PE,
a foundation built on confidence, bravery and motivation.
I think together I believe we can continue to shape a future
where every girl is empowered to thrive in sport and in life.
Thanks for listening.
I feel like that deserves a round of applause, I have to say, I'm sorry.
Thanks Annemarie, and sorry chair, just taking over here, but Josephine.
Good evening everyone. My name is Joseph Mante and I'm proud to represent Agua Empowerment Network,
a grassroot charity based right here in York Gardens Library Wandsworth.
We exist to serve, support and uplift women, children, youth and family from underprivileged backgrounds,
often overlooked backgrounds.
At Agua Empowerment, we believe health and empowerment goes hand in hand, especially
for women and girls who are often told they are not enough, not strong enough, not shaped
right or simply not seen.
That is why I am here to speak something very close to my heart, physical activity as a
lifestyle for welfare and belonging. We run women -focused physical health activities,
not just as exercise classes, but as safe space of joy, healing and empowerment. For
instance, we offer Zumba and chair yoga with music, music that gets you moving and lifts
your spirit. Women of them, sorry, many of the women who attend these sessions have been
asked by their GPs and hospitals to stay active due to upcoming surgeries, chronic pain and
mental health struggles. But often they don't know where to begin or don't feel welcomed
anywhere. We create a space where they feel seen, celebrated and capable, no matter their
age, size and background. We also organize table tennis and football matches where girls
play competitively with boys. You should see them and their faces full of courage, determination
and pride. Many of our girls also join the parkrun at Battersea Park every Sunday with
our coach, rain or shine. And they look forward to it because of them. And this is not just
running, it's belonging. As a health and social care professional myself, I do understand
deeply how physical activity is not just the body. It touches every part of our being,
be it mentally, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically.
And that is why I have joined the Women and Girls Activity Group,
not just to support others, but to honor the holistic power of movement.
I will share my personal story with you regarding one of my daughters
who is chubby but beautiful, began to struggle with low self -esteem,
and she would redo and her joy started to fade.
Together we explored different activities and eventually she got to join athletic club through the school.
Sacred heart, thank you Ms. Oman.
And she later was invited to join the school's athletic team.
This transformation has increased her confidence, happiness and energy that has been life changing.
And this is not just for her, but for the whole family.
This is what physical activity can do.
And it is not just fitting in, it's about feeling free.
And that is why tonight I'm speaking also on the team that matters so much.
everybody deserves to be celebrated.
No matter its shape or ability,
every girl should know she can belong in a sport or activity space.
Every woman should feel seen and supported, not ashamed or excluded.
Every community will thrive when no one is left behind.
And when we don't encourage our beautiful women and girls in physical activities, the
consequences are real.
And this could start or could begin from declining in mental health and physical health, loss
of confidence and identity, increase in isolation and disconnection.
In this case, it can even result in suicidal thoughts or self -harm.
And this is not just about fitness, it's about serving lives and saving lives and restoring dignity.
And in other, to the wider Wandsworth borough, supporting groups like ours means more than just funding activities.
It means that investing in the hearts of the community, building a stronger, more united
cultural heritage.
And that is what we are looking for.
A borough where mothers, daughters, sisters, and not just, I'm not just striving, but thriving.
It should be a place where we all work with life, full of life, and can find joy, healing,
friendship through movement. I believe this is a great thing to support and thank you very much for listening.
And last but by no means least, Fozia.
My name is Fozia Riaz and I represent Happy Homes Community, a grassroot organization
dedicated to supporting women who are culturally mindful due to religious and cultural beliefs.
I joined the Women's and Girls' Group because it arranges activities that are very suitable
for the women I work with, activities that respect their environment, values and cultural
needs.
I felt this was the right platform where I could express my worries, thoughts and the
of the women in my community.
Many women in our community face cultural and religious barriers that prevent them from
participating in mixed gender sports or public social spaces.
Without access to safe female -only environments, they are left behind in areas that are vital
for personal and community well -being, such as physical health, self -confidence, and social
connection.
This often leads to long -term isolation, poor mental health, and increased risk of conditions
like obesity.
By creating safe, inclusive, and culturally respectful spaces for women, we can give them
the opportunity to thrive, connect and take control of their well -being.
I have already helped bring women together to take part in volleyball, badminton, netball,
as well as social outings and gatherings.
These activities have made a visible and powerful impact.
Women have become more physically active, mentally uplifted and socially engaged.
However, we face ongoing challenges due to the high cost of venues
and the difficulty of finding and funding qualified female coaches.
For women in our community, having female -only coaches and environment is not just a preference.
It is essential for cultural and religious reasons. Without this, many cannot participate at all.
In addition to sports and social sessions, I am deeply passionate about creating holistic mother and daughter activities, particularly for mothers and daughters.
These activities provide a space where women across generations can come together, learn from one another, build stronger bonds and reduce feelings of isolation.
When mothers and daughters engage side by side in meaningful activities, whether physical, creative or social, it helps strengthen family relationships,
improves communication, and nurtures a sense of shared belonging.
This session promotes not just individual health, but also family harmony and intergenerational well -being.
This borough is beautifully multicultural and every culture carries its own traditions of health, community, and support.
When we take these into account, we can build stronger support systems that are truly inclusive.
I have witnessed firsthand how much these opportunities mean to women, how they uplift
their spirit, improve their health, and connect them to one another.
I believe that by supporting these safe spaces and family -focused activities, we are not
only investing in the health of women but in the strength of our entire community.
With your support, we can continue to grow this beautiful work and ensure no woman or
girl is left behind simply because of her cultural needs.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I want to extend my thanks from the Environment Committee for all of the hard work, for your
speeches tonight and especially every member, even the ones that aren't here, of the Task
and Finish Group for creating this set of recommendations.
Do the members of the committee have any questions or anything or any input on the paper that's
being provided tonight.
Councillor Lance.
Thank you very much.
That was really, you really brought that to life in terms of the benefits for a wide range
of women and girls communities.
Thank you.
I was really pleased to see in your report that you thought about the measurements, about
about how you're gonna make sure
that things have made a difference.
So I'd be interested to know how many of those
would be sort of time,
sort of timed or time limited,
you know, to kind of make them into smart objectives.
And if we could see sort of some progress
of how we're meeting those as you see your plan
put into action for those targets that are committed to.
Thank you.
Would you like to come on that, Ms. Davis?
I'm happy to take that question, thank you.
So the whole process has, the whole plan has been co -produced, so we've gone through a bit of a journey together.
We've now come up with these ideas and these project plans, but it doesn't really end there.
We have to take those to the next stage, which would be a level of granular detail that would require us to establish a baseline for some of them.
so do some extra research, so know what we're dealing with now so we can build upon that.
So I think it would be really helpful if you're interested for us to come back to committee
and report on the progress with some of those projects.
I think the next stage would be to know which are our front -runner projects, which ones
can we – you know, which are our quick wins.
I mean, there are a number in there in the plan which we think are easily deliverable,
and there are others which take this work.
So we're already seeing some green shoots.
So Fozia talked about the women, mothers, and daughters
activities, and the volleyball and badminton's
happening on the Roehampton.
But we'd like to see some more of that, some happening
in Latchmere, where we were able to establish women -only
swimming.
And so there's green shoots on some of them, and some of them
take a little bit more work.
So I think things like the lending of gym equipment,
clothing for physical activity and a couple of the others.
For example, the outreach work might need to have
some more development before we can kind of be
very detailed about those projects.
Thank you, Ms. Souts.
Council Cuddy, you had a point.
Thank you very much, Chair,
and thank you very much for a fantastic presentation.
I totally agree with everything that's been said.
You know, grassroots participation for women in sport
and physical activity is so important.
One of the things that you did mention was sort of elite sport.
And I think perhaps there's a perception that, you know,
we don't have as much or as wide a representation in some of the elite sports
from women and girls from our borough or across the whole of the borough
as we might have.
And I wonder what kind of plans in here would sort of, I guess,
mean that really talented athletes from all backgrounds
would be able to sort of succeed and get support to become
really, really serious athletes?
Yeah, I'm happy to take that again.
So yeah, well, I think growing our athletes of the future
starts really young.
So I think the secondary school work is really important.
So we need girls to think they can do it.
We need them to stop dropping out of PE
when they go from primary school to secondary and then we can nurture their talent.
But it goes all the way through.
So one of the really important things we need to do is to have more female coaches or at
least men who know how to coach women because it is different and we need that, I think
we need to work on that.
So network of female coaches and role models is going to really help strengthen the females
who are in doing this now and encourage more women to become coaches.
So representation really, really matters.
And we've got one in there about the viewership of, you know, of sports.
And actually, that's really important.
We need to keep raising the profile of women's sports and say, you can do it.
Look at these women.
And these women need to look like our women.
So we need female coaches coming from all different backgrounds.
We need women who are wearing hijab being coaches.
We need you know, because if you can't see her you can't be her
So it's at every stage that we need that. So this plan has got that I think
Throughout so we want women to do sport for for pleasure and joy, which people talked about
We also want them to excel if that's what they want. I just I just wondered whether there was an opportunity to
sort of encourage
You know sort of elite sports clubs and and sports organizations
to come to Wandsworth and work with the girls.
And Chelsea Football Club, I know,
works with some of the boys in the area,
and is it possible to sort of get that kind of thing
for the girls as well?
And I personally am a big women's rugby fan,
so it'd be great to get Harlequins or someone down here
to sort of look at the girls.
Hello, sorry I'd like to answer that one.
So we do, so at my school, I run girls' leagues,
and we bring in local organizations,
So we work with Chelsea, AFC Wimbledon, Battery Ironsides for rugby, the LTA for tennis and
Platform Cricket for cricket as well as Spencer and Surrey.
We tend to...
Do you have a daughter at Honeywell?
Did you?
No, sorry, I thought...
Okay, yeah, I think I've met you before.
I thought you knew your daughter.
But yeah, so we already are trying to do that in our school at the moment.
And like I said, with my children, it was that we connected local clubs to the schools
so that they had that kind of connection already, because that's where we're seeing the drop -off.
I'll have girls that will leave me having been the borough champions, and then I see
them when they've gone to secondary school, they come back to visit and they say they're
not doing anything.
And there's definitely a drop -off, which one of our plans is to do a survey with the girls,
is to find out exactly what their reasons are and how we can help that.
So yeah.
And also just to mention that through all of this work
that we've been doing, and we've got the community sport
and physical activity network, which
is kind of the umbrella over this theme,
and it will be other themes in the future,
we've got the involvement of all of the, well, I mean,
they're not necessarily at the table, but we know them all.
And they're offering to support and help us.
So Womenhood and AFC have got a really amazing female coaching
program that they've just launched. We're in touch with them, we're in touch with Harlequins,
who are a great friend and, you know, and they will host our activities and increasingly
as our projects become a reality, we'll call them to support us and I'm sure they will
answer that call.
Thank you. I think Councillor White wants to come in with a question mark.
Yeah, thanks. Councillor Caddy, you're doing so well and then you mentioned Chelsea FC,
I'm really pleased with the hard work that's gone into this report and I'm pleased also
that we've looked at people who might find it difficult to get involved in group sports
because they don't see themselves represented.
I think Wandsworth is successful because of the diversity in the borough and I think we
must really encourage that.
I must declare an interest.
my son coaches in America, he's a football coach in America, and I want to get to a situation
where Wandsworth can produce a team good enough to go over there and beat his and that would
make my day. But on a serious point, he coaches young adult women and in America sport is
absolutely massive and the success of their national team, the success of teams and players
from America encourages young women to get involved in the game.
So I think Council Academy does make a good point, I think, to make sure that it's everybody
we're thinking about here and making sure that people can improve to the best that they
possibly can, and then maybe go off to areas where they can succeed even more and bring
back those success stories that other women can thrive, can be encouraged by.
I was just wondering whether, because Anne -Marie spoke about the drop -off between junior and
and secondary schools, but also around this,
where do women go after they finish school?
Are there established links?
Are ones worth establishing links with clubs
and with other areas where they might
be able to move on to and continue sport
into their adult lives?
Did you want to comment on that?
Yeah, I mean, a primary school, we definitely do that.
And the secondary schools do have that option also.
One example is the Wimbledon Junior Tennis Initiative,
where the coaches come into your school.
They do a few weeks of coaching with you, with your younger children.
They identify potential children, and then they offer them free tennis
until they're 16 every weekend down in Roehampton.
But we have that with quite a few sports now that come into,
not just Sacred Heart, but it's offered to all schools in Wandsworth, so it is just about
whether the person within that school brings them in, and that's something we're trying
to promote in our PE forums that everybody should be bringing in.
You know, it's always free as well, which is you don't turn anything away that's free.
But yeah, we are trying to do that so that we have links and pathways throughout.
Great, thank you.
So I think...
Quickly, I just thought...
I mean, obviously, the council is an important system convener, so we, through our sports
development team, know the clubs in the borough and we will be continuing to engage them,
signposting, connecting people.
So we had a very successful event in March and there's a real desire to keep meeting,
so everybody keeps meeting and making these connections and I think that's what's going
help us succeed into the long term. So it's the network of connections that we have and
the opportunities therefore for our women and girls.
Thank you. I think we're drawn to a close now. We have a few more papers. But again,
thank you so much for your contribution. Committee, do you note the contents of the report? Okay,
thank you. Thank you, everyone.

6 Library Strategy (Paper No. 25-206)

Let's move swiftly on because we still have a lot of business together and not a whole
lot of time.
So next we're going to move on to our sixth paper, which is the library strategy, paper
number 25 -206.
We have Councillor Gasser and Ms Gardner presenting this paper.
Is that okay if I start talking while we're waiting for the presentation?
Go for it.
Speed things up.
So yes, thank you again for allowing me to be here again, and thank you.
This is another piece of work that's very, very close to my heart.
After three years working with the library service, and we've got the most fantastic
library.
We're one of the most successful boroughs in London, if not the country, aren't we,
for visits and issues.
So we're doing really, really well.
We love our libraries, but we are aware that not everybody is coming to our libraries.
So our strategy is all about how do we really make sure that all members of our community
are enjoying our libraries, making the most of our libraries, seeing what we have to offer,
telling us what more they want us to offer.
So we're going to be reaching out to our communities.
We're going to be offering longer hours, increased internet access,
more classes and study opportunities, more activities that interest people.
And we're working with partners such as youth services and the voluntary sector
so that they can come in and open up our libraries sometimes when the library staff are not there.
And the whole aim of this is to want everyone, all our residents, all our officers, all our voluntary groups,
think about our libraries first.
If you want to put something on, if you need some information, if you need to get out a book,
if you need to, you know, do some studying, you think about our libraries first and our
libraries will be at the heart of all of our communities. So I'm going to hand over to
Ms Gardner and the team to talk about the strategy.
Thank you very much, Councillor Gasser. I think it's my pleasure to introduce you to
our exciting and ambitious Wandsworth Library Strategy, which we're calling Libraries First,
So I'm just going to quickly set out some context, themes and a selection of some of
the key deliverables for year one.
So I think it's important to mention how much work has already gone into the development
of the strategy.
We've had specialist consultant shared intelligence who worked with us on community needs analysis,
research and benchmarking. That also included research into the department
culture media and support non -user surveys. There was direct engagement with
committee councillors, community groups including more non -users there, current
users of the service, other council departments and more people. It's also
important to mention how closely we've worked with our delivery partner, GLL, in
order to consider how this would be delivered and to ensure that what we're doing is eminently
achievable, yet ambitious.
So the vision and the guiding principle of this is that we want Wandsworth Libraries
to be the first place of connection for our communities.
So it's all about getting more people into libraries and bringing them to benefit from
services that libraries can provide. One of the most important squares on here is our
skilled staff. It's long been known that library staff and librarians are some of the most
trusted professionals, usually only behind doctors and nurses and people like that. So
that's a hugely important thing for our residents, all our residents, but actually also our vulnerable
residents and I don't think that trust in library staff can be over -emphasised
really, it's hugely important. We have distilled our research and our
consultation and so on into nine strategic pillars. This is where all of
our services fit, obviously some of them bridge more than one pillar, but this is
way of turning this into something that we can then look at as an action plan and as
action areas. We have, next one please, oh splendid, sorry I probably went quicker than
you were expecting. We've got some, well a smattering of things on here but there's
plenty more in the actual strategy and the action plan. So some of the things that we're
looking to achieve is universal library membership for children to ensure that all children in
the borough actually have a library card and can benefit from that. We're looking at and
have funding for the refurbishment of Battersea Park and Ballum Children's Libraries, which
will be of huge benefit to families, Ballum being one of the busiest in the borough. We
will be extending opening hours as part of the strategy. We are looking at an IT refresh
which will be done in year one, introduction of wireless printing, supporting of Welcome
to Wandsworth and the London Borough of Culture with more cultural events in libraries, and
we are going for accreditation for libraries of sanctuary. I kind of won't go through every
single blob because that would obviously take a really long time but I'm really happy to
answer any questions on them and if anyone wants to pick anything out then do say so.
It's all in the strategy and the action plan though. Please do give us your input.
Thank you very much for the presentation.
Councillor Apps, do you want to come in?
Thank you very much for that presentation.
It's so exciting and I have to say as chair of the Children's Committee, I'm so pleased
to see Universal Library membership for all children.
I think in children's they're going to be launching something called 10 by 10,
which the idea is that a child by the time they're 10 in Wandsworth will have done 10 things,
and one of them has visited a library and know how to use a library.
So I presume that's all linked up.
Very, very interesting stat here that 46 % use the library as a study space,
not what you would expect, which is to borrow books.
That's still high at 36, but that's the highest.
I've wondered if you'd got any information
on the ages of the young people and children.
How young?
Yes, so that stat is from our snapshot survey
that we did very recently, which involved people
actually going, officers actually going out into the libraries, catching people and speaking
with them. So it does give a slightly different perspective, which is good because we want
all the perspectives, than you would get in some of the other surveys where people scan
a QR code or something like that and respond in their own time, which we also have. So
So we were very specifically looking to target those people who perhaps are more vulnerable
or perhaps wouldn't respond to those other kinds of survey mechanisms.
But I think that we're confident that an awful lot of those people studying in libraries
are young people.
And certainly from anecdotal experience from myself and my colleagues watching people,
There are large numbers of young people looking for study space in libraries and who are studying
in libraries.
I think that's probably what we all see being borne out.
I think Northcote Library particularly are accused of young people wanting to use that
for study space.
And also it's an absolute lifeline for our children in poorer communities to have that
as study space.
and Councillor Cook will remember the battle royal we had over closing York Gardens library
and then we looked at the children's library survey and saw, because it was going to be
closed because it wasn't used much, but that was adults and we looked at the children's
library service and it showed that that library was used by more children than anywhere else
in the borough for obvious reasons, so yeah, deprivation. So anyway, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Councillor Apps.
I was going to ask about the same thing, the same issue in my ward, that overcrowding leads
to high use of the libraries.
Thank you.
Councillor Brooks.
Thank you very much.
My question is similar, but sort of linking it to the spaces in the libraries available
to be let out commercially.
Could we get some information on how much income the libraries bring in from businesses
or organizations renting out the rooms?
The reason I'm asking is because of the overcrowding, especially during peak times with revision,
is that space the best, is that the best use of the space if people can't find access?
And is that space otherwise sat empty?
Because if it's not bringing in much income, then is that the right approach?
I'll have a go.
So yes, we can put together those figures on income.
Unfortunately we couldn't do it fast enough for this evening, but we will produce that
library by library as soon as possible and share it with everyone interested.
I think that it is very variable across the libraries as to what the take -up of those
spaces is.
We also use those spaces for library activities, which I think is quite important because some
library activities we obviously can't necessarily just hold them easily in the middle of the
library, so we do use those spaces ourselves as well. We have certainly been discussing
the fact that when there isn't somebody in those higher spaces, we could be letting
other people into them, and we do wherever possible, but we will ensure that that is
what is happening. Obviously there's some set up and some take down time when there's
in there, but otherwise that's not a problem.
We've also been discussing recently how we might look at expanding provision around,
particularly around the run -up to exams, because that's obviously a huge pinch point in terms
of young people trying to get into study spaces.
I don't know whether my colleagues have any more to add.
Thank you.
Councillor Osborn.
Yeah, three things about the program, the plan, the strategy.
First of all, I'd like to say I'm thrilled to see the reference to the expansion of the
mini -museums.
We have a very good one not far from here across the road in Wandsworth town.
But I'm keen to see that expanded throughout our libraries.
and I wonder if you could say a bit about where the mini museums will be expanded to
as part of the heritage side of what we do.
Secondly, in the section on well -being and the aims that we have on well -being,
ENABLE pioneered in this borough the concept of social prescribing,
trying to get people to be more active in open spaces to improve their health.
But there is of course a cultural aspect to social prescribing as well.
There's the cathartism program that's been piloted in the Balaam and Tooting libraries for example.
And I wonder if that can be included more specifically in what we're saying in the strategy.
I mean I'd like to see something that says that the libraries are hosting cultural prescribing programs
as part of that well -being program.
If it's not in there already, it might be there in some form and I've missed it.
And finally, in the section marked,
which is headed up where we reference, At the Heart of the Community,
I think it's worth saying that the Wandsworth Arts and Culture Strategy,
which is a ten -year strategy starting in 2021,
because it was co -designed with residents,
that's part of something that's at the heart of the community as well.
cultural thing which I think could be added to the list of all the things we're
we're highlighting as part of our at the heart of the community activity in our
libraries. Yes I can answer the question as long as I can remember what they went in.
Mini museums. Yes, so one of the most important things about the mini museums
and yes we do have one in the new Wandsworth town library is in the design
for the new libraries at Roehampton and York Gardens this is being designed in
so instead of trying to shoehorn something in we're actually designing it
right from the start. So there will be cases for objects and museum objects
which will be interspersed with library shelving which is hugely successful in
other places in terms of serendipitous discovery of those artifacts. So you
don't actually have to want to go to the bit that is the mini museum, you will
discover those things on your way around the library. So we're really excited
about that. Obviously that's not going to be quite the same for the libraries that we've
already got because we've already got them. We do want to start at Putney, which I gather
is particularly important one to start with a mini museum and that is going to and is
specifically mentioned now in the plan that the libraries we've already got will start
work on Mini Museum in Putney. So Cathartism is in a different place in the
strategy. It's actually in information because it's about us connecting
programmes and people together. It could be put in several places I would say
because it's one of those cross -cutting programmes. It's definitely there
and we're very proud of it and we'd like to do more of that kind of work.
I think if there's anything really specific then my colleague Daniel is here
who can probably say something about the specifics of cathartism.
And what was the third thing?
Social prescribing.
Oh, social prescribing.
Do you want me to repeat it?
At the heart of the community, I was just suggesting the arts and culture strategy should
be one of the things that we have in the list under that heading.
The social prescribing thing was a well -being thing, including cathartism.
Oh yes of course but yeah that's fine I'll check that and make sure it if it's
not in it goes in we've been through several revisions and occasionally
things accidentally disappear so we'll ensure that that's there no problem
Thank You councillor French thank you chair I just had a question it was
following on I think well it was a while ago now so I can't remember who made the
remark about auditing and how libraries are being used.
I think whilst that may be useful,
it needs to be nuanced so that we understand the demand
time of when it's being asked of the library.
And also, if it is being rented, what
are they wanting to rent it for?
Because obviously, we want business
to thrive in all of those things,
but not at the expense necessarily of young people
having space to study.
So I think if we are going to do numbers,
let's just go a bit deeper to give us
a fuller picture of what exactly is going on.
And maybe if we're looking at extending hours,
that may be able to offset some of the demand
as it is currently, so that we just account for those things.
So I'd just be keen to see that reflected in any sort of audit
that takes place.
Thank you.
Yes, I think that's absolutely what we would
want to take into account.
There's definitely a balance to be found.
We also, aside from the more commercial side, if you want to look at it like that, of maybe a local business or something using our spaces,
have also got a lot of community groups using our spaces who would pay a reduced rate, for example.
But in order for them to have those spaces, that's really important for them to have those spaces in the community near where they are living and working.
Also, we've obviously got the Access for All programme, which means that we're offering
50 % reduction on room hire and hall hire for people who qualify for Access for All.
So that's another important strand that libraries are delivering that we would want to be mindful
of when we're looking at this kind of thing.
So certainly, we're all about the balance, I think.
Thank you.
Were there any other comments on this paper?
Okay, so this paper's for decision by the cabinet.
Do the committee support the recommendations
in paragraph two of the report?
Agreed?

7 Quarter 4 Budget Monitoring (Paper No. 25-207)

So the next paper is the revenue budget monitoring for quarter four, paper number 25 -207.
7, we have Mr. Moreland who is presenting this paper.
Good evening, Committee.
Thank you very much.
Yes, my name is Alex Moreland.
I'm the Assistant Director of Finance and Performance within Environment Community Services.
So this paper presents the final out -turn for last year's budget for services within
the environment committee.
It's largely for the out -turn and continuation of the position we were reporting throughout
the year. So on that basis, I don't intend to particularly raise any points. I think
they're covered in the report, but I'm very happy to answer any questions that anyone
may have. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Moynihan. Councillor Caddy.
Thank you very much, Chair. It's relating to paragraph 14 on page 93. And I just wondered
what was going on with the inspection enforcement, because it talks about there being a neighbors'
spend because there's additional staffing and related costs.
Then when we look at the number of enforcements
later on in the performance paper,
it seems to have gone down year on year.
So I just wondered why that might be.
And then my second question is, on skip and hoarding licenses,
are we sort of checking enough are enforced
and getting revenue by sort of taking action
against those that aren't?
Because anecdotally, I would say,
and residents have said to me that there are an awful lot of people who put skips or cones or bins or whatever it might be blocking the road
and they're not paying for a sort of parking space to be reserved.
And I just wondered whether we were trying to crack down on that and that might be a good source of income.
Mr. Martin.
Thank you very much.
So the second part, if I may address it.
Yeah, absolutely right.
This is something that the highways inspectors, that's a key part of their role to go around amongst other things,
to look for areas where businesses or private users aren't fully reflecting the licenses.
So it is something that we are trying to address.
I think we have -
Just a really quick question.
Where can residents report it?
So if a resident see it, because people are always saying to me, I want to report it and
And I'll report it when they tell me, but it would almost be better for them to be able
to report it themselves.
Is there someone?
So I would have to double check, but I believe you could use the online reporting tool on
the council's website.
And on there it would have various different categories.
I would need to double check which of the subcategories would be relevant, most relevant
for obstruction on the highway potentially.
But I would need to double check and I can provide a link to members if that is helpful.
So, Councillor Kelly, report it, we'll have it that, and it would be interesting if you
find anything missing on there, because it should be very comprehensive.
Any more questions?
Sorry, that was the first bit.
So, that was to do with the additional staffing costs.
So I think we have recognized,
and I think the council will continue to recognize
that flighting is a particular problem,
and it's one that we need to try
and address as much as possible.
And a key role is taking action against those people
that flight it, so there's a range of measures
that the council is undertaking.
So I think we would hope that we would see
continued level of enforcement.
There are challenges associated with it.
As to the particular nuances of it, I'm probably not the best place to answer as to why enforcement numbers may well have fallen.
We do see fluctuations in terms of kind of activity undertaken.
There is a higher level of deterrent now with increase in FPNs.
I don't think that's particularly led to the decline we've seen, but there are other drivers that may have influenced it.
Any more questions?
Councillor Lawless.
Thank you.
Can I just put a shout out to our extra monitoring officers.
We have a monitoring officer who me and Councillor Osborne has been working with a lot in Tooting
Broadway who's doing fantastic work, not only I think looking at where there's fly tipping
and how to give out fines, but just practical advice for residents who have wheelie bins
and don't take their bins out who are putting food waste in recycling bags who aren't put
in their garden waste in the right things and their bags are not being collected because
they're not putting it out properly.
And can I name the officer?
Is that okay?
Hayley.
Hayley's doing great work.
Thanks Hayley for your watching at 10 o 'clock at night.
But that's also helping make our buyer cleaner because she's practically going to every
house on a street today, she delivered letters to every house.
And that's gonna improve the service in the future.
So, thanks.
Thank you, Councillor Laws.
Are there any other questions on this paper?
No, okay.
So the outcome of this is just a note for information.
So is that noted?
I did.

8 Corporate Plan Actions and KPIs Performance Report (Paper No. 25-208)

On to agenda item number 10, corporate plan actions and KPI performance report.
That's paper number 25 -208.
I believe Ms. O 'Connor, you were talking on this.
Yes, so good evening committee.
I'm Claire O 'Connor, Director of Climate Change Policy and Communications for the council.
This is the regular report that you receive to June committee every year.
It gives you a report back on the NWA performance for the key performance indicators within
the remit of this committee.
It also gives a narrative feedback on the actions that fall within the remit of this
committee in relation to the corporate plan.
I'm happy to take any questions alongside my fellow officers.
Thank you, Ms. O 'Connor.
Councillor Lourd.
Thank you.
Can I ask a question about the percentage of public streets with acceptably low levels
of litter after cleansing and it looks like a really good number.
How do we assess that?
What's the criteria?
Sure, there's a, we've got Cindy Gardner hopefully online.
Okay, alright.
So, that's it.
In the Broad there is an industry standard approach to it.
In the Broad, clearly I'll ask Cindy Gardner to do a proper note on this,
but in the Broad there's an industry standard approach to how our streets are inspected.
It's a regular inspection.
It's a double check of inspections undertaken by the contractor in fact.
But I really will need to ask Cindy to provide a detailed answer.
Councillor Perks.
Thank you very much.
It's good to see the numbers of missed collections falling and an improvement after the alarming
spike last year.
However, we are still almost three times above target.
And I sort of take on board what's written here about all the things we're doing.
But we are still a long way above target.
So what more can be done beyond what's described here to try and bring us back down to where
we need to be?
Thank you.
Well, perhaps, yes, to Sydney.
She's literally just joined the call.
Maybe I can start, then, and Sydney can add some details.
So we are relentlessly pursuing this point, Councillor, through a range of actions, most
which have already received funding approval from that committee some months ago now, the
Clean and Burrow Phase II funding report.
Many of the actions relate to the work, obviously, undertaken by CERCO.
Many of the actions are in collaboration with CERCO, and I have to say both our officers
and CERCO's officers have been relentless in trying to improve the figures.
Much of it involves the reality that we made a massive change to our approach last June,
unprecedented change.
Much of the pressure on that KPI relates to new approaches, new routes that have all had
to settle in and we, I think I would agree that it's taken a too long period of time
for them to settle in.
But the changes that we're putting in place, some of them are only just being put in place.
So we just referred to our waste enforcement officers, some of them are brand new, some
of whom have clearly taken some time to recruit.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that we've got a plan, we're relentlessly pursuing
it.
It includes some things that are only just being put in place and those things that are
that's already been put in place, we're already seeing the benefits of them.
So perhaps Councillor Wyatt and then we'll turn to Cindy.
Yeah, are we talking about specifically what we're talking about?
The missed collection.
Yeah, the missed collection numbers are coming down month by month.
We had a spike as you identified.
But over the last few months, it has improved.
And we're expecting from them a 10 % improvement every month.
And we are looking to reach that target after a time.
But they are facing penalties when they're not reaching the target.
So they are being incentivized to push down.
But it wasn't good, as Paul was saying.
But we are actually honing in and really pushing them.
We're having monthly meetings with them
to make sure that they do improve their service.
Thank you.
Did we want to also pass on to Cindy on the call?
It will be useful.
It may be one or two specific examples.
Sure.
Good evening, can you hear me? Yeah we can hear you. Thank you. So just leading on from
Councillor White and Paul's update there, I think the key thing for us is around tighter
collection processes and tighter contract management and we are stretching CERCO to
deliver the service that we all want to see in this borough as officers and as residents.
Some of the key things that we're asking CERCO to focus on, as well as our own contract monitoring officers, is the repeated missed issues.
There should never be a repeated missed collection and we want to focus strongly on that.
So from time to time, missed collections may happen, but there should never be a sequence of missed collections.
So that's one of the key areas that we're focusing on.
And CERCO have heavily invested in better monitoring of the crews.
So they have bought in additional supervisors.
There are different processes that the supervisors are monitoring crews.
We're also tracking the performance of each crew
and identifying where there is failure for a particular crew,
trying to understand the reason for that.
The supervisors are also following the crews after that crew has been down the road to check on that crew's own performance.
So there are a number of things that we're focusing on and this is a real target for us to reduce the miscollection numbers.
Thank you very much. Councillor Cook.
Thank you, Chair. It's just an observation really.
I've been around here long enough to remember the last contract change.
some quite significant changes in that shift over.
Balancing of rounds, all that sort of thing.
And it took a matter of a handful of weeks for everything to bed down.
So I just, I'm mystified, I'm just astonished really that here we are,
a year plus in, and the same conversations are going on.
It's absolutely incredible.
And you clearly, from everything we've just heard,
But you clearly don't understand it fully either, which I mean I just find extremely
alarming.
It's an incredible situation we're in.
So can't help but make that observation.
Got to be realistic about this.
Which contract change was that?
Well, last time 2012.
Okay.
And were there any new services being brought in on that?
Yeah.
Which ones?
Well, a big element of change there was the number of the crews went down from memory
to four to three, so that's a very big change.
And all the rounds were changed as a consequence of that, so they all needed to be balanced.
So that's a very large change, and it took a small number of weeks for that to just work
its way through, get it all sorted out.
Mr. Chavout, do you want to go?
Yeah, I appreciate that that was a significant change.
This June 24 change was by far the greatest ever change though that I've witnessed as
a Senior Officer in London for many years and it involved an entire new fleet at the
same time as new routes, new in -cab technologies that needed to be used and refreshed those
crews, new route, clearly with new routes you have new crews dealing with therefore
new premises for many of those crew.
And for us in June it was the first time a full split of waste from recycling and the
first time ever increasing of course the use of food waste as a collection.
So, I mean, that's not to belittle, though, the fact that we do know that this is taking
longer than ideal and we are, therefore, as Cindy's described, relentlessly pursuing improvement
still.
Councillor Wake, you want to add to that?
Yeah, I mean, to repeat what we just said, I mean, with the monitoring officers, we are
seeing improvement and the numbers are improving month by month by the stated amount that we
expect them to improve by.
So these numbers are going down, they're going in the right direction as Mr Chadwick just
said.
The type of change that came in from one set of trucks to three set of trucks going for
different rounds rather than just taking the one that was a massive change was a
really really big change I don't I don't think they cope particularly well with
that I'd agree but we are we have got on top of that now I think and we're going
in the right direction I think that we will see improvements and until we reach
our target.
Councillor Apps.
Thank you very much I share the kind of focus on this it's really
important issue. I think it's really important we bought in food waste
collection it was something that we needed to do and we kind of it's good
that we've done it before it's been mandatory and it's something that we
promised people that we would and I think many households are really
appreciating that and I look forward to kind of continuing to see that kind of
month -on -month improvement and that we're working towards and you know and
if we have any filters that we step it up and and look at where those blockages
and we kind of face those challenges and work through them.
But I wanted to come onto sort of one of the benefits,
and actually it's really interesting to see
with these KPIs that often we describe what's gone wrong
if something goes wrong, you know,
we describe it in detail,
whereas where we've seen a real improvement,
which is something that's gone year on year,
Wandsworth has really struggled
with its level of recycling.
It's been a real problem for us.
You know, we've been like, you know,
In before 2022 and in fact since 2022 in the early years of our administration
There were incredibly low levels of recycling which brought us into the bottom of the league table
But we are now starting to see a good shift on that
And I wanted to ask officers what they thought had brought that around and what the benefits are
financially as well as environmentally
Thank You council apps and yeah, I shared the
I think when the administration took over it was maybe around 22 % and now we are approaching
29%.
Ms O 'Connor, do you want to add any comments to that?
So I think that would be one for Cindy to respond to because she is the expert and she
can talk about the financial impact that Councillor Ainslie Ainslie talked about.
Thank you.
So I think the key thing to talk about here is how we've driven an increase in recycling and waste diversion.
And that key element is bringing in the separate vehicles to collect rubbish and recycling.
That predominantly has led to the increase in recycling because we do believe that a lot of recycling sacks had actual contamination in before.
and they were being looked at by the crews and being put into the rubbish side of the twin pack vehicles.
So now that we're seeing the true recycling going through to Smuggler's Way, we're able to count all of that as recycling.
And then when we get our final figures, we obviously do deduct that contamination.
What I would say is the difference in the pay as you throw rate between rubbish and recycling is significant.
£165 a tonne to throw rubbish away, £30 to throw recycling away or to have that treated
and it's £0 to process food waste. On the food waste element, we this week have seen
another 2 tonnes of food waste collected. This week from last week, it's our biggest
amount so far 81 .9 tonnes of food waste collected in one week. This is such an impressive figure
for this borough quite often when you bring in a new surface you see the tonnage drop off but in
Wandsworth we can see we're seeing that figure consistently increase. Yes we are adding flaps
to those rounds now so you would expect to see a slight increase but we are really pleased with
with what's happening in the borough with regards to recycling and food waste.
Excellent, I'm very glad to hear that.
Councillor Osborn.
We're focused tonight on the problems we're facing on the street at the moment
and we're trying to work as a committee collectively, consensually to focus on,
which is a major improvement, I think,
which is the deployment of the monitoring officers
like Haley Hansen and so on.
I think that's in part a recognition
that other systems we've been using
to try and get a grip on this and get it to bed down
haven't always been 100 % successful,
although some of them have worked quite well.
But the monitoring officer system
seems to be working very well.
And, you know, I'm happy to make a shout out on that.
I could comment on what happened in 2012.
I'm not going to, because it wasn't the nirvana which Councillor Cook is describing.
Things would, I could argue that things never really bedded down after the contractual changes
in 2012.
It was just as simply the matter that the KPIs and the monitoring system didn't pick
up the fact that the street sweeping was separated by a day from the refuse collection and that
resulted in an enormous amount of litter in the street.
But the system of monitoring it was poor and therefore it didn't show up as a problem on
the KPIs.
It never bedded down.
So I don't really want to go into that debate.
I want to focus on where we are today and get both sides of the table to do that.
I wasn't going to prolong it anymore but I'd be really interested to genuinely understand
what the issue is in terms of the non -collections because I mean we've seen it a lot in our street
and I appreciate there have been changes made to the systems but fundamentally
It's a few guys picking up the rubbish and putting them in a lorry and
looking at the rubbish and seeing that there's either some left or there isn't and
I don't understand what big change was made that has generated such a
sort of huge increase in these missed collections and I
and I appreciate everything and the work that's being done to try and reduce those now and
Understand that you know the monitoring of the calves and monitoring of the crews
but why are they doing something different from what they used to do?
Why aren't they just putting all the bags in the back of the lorry?
I think there used to be one lorry, now there's three lorries.
So you can't extrapolate the figures that we had when we just had one lorry
to three different types of collections.
So if you missed a rubbish collection, for instance,
but you took a recycling, you know, that would just require that that lorry to deal with that issue.
But now you've got three different vehicles.
So the amount of missed collections will, you know, it will be a larger figure
because there are three different things to collect rather than just two that went to one lorry.
So it's a more difficult operation.
But these things are being worked through at the moment and we are seeing improvements and I expect they'll get there in the end.
I just don't understand. I really still don't understand.
Just chuck all the bags in the door?
Mr. Chadwick.
But also as it goes down, there's no bags in the door.
Can we keep the conversation going for the chair? Mr. Chadwick.
So, what I think would be useful, and I appreciate the question, what I think would be useful
is if, I mean, there are a range of different reasons for miscollections, and Cindy Gardner's
team are working through the, you know, why those different types of miscollections happen,
as she's described earlier.
She's trying to eradicate, particularly, those that happen time and time again.
I mean, there are probably at least a dozen different categories of miscollection that
the team are dealing with.
Perhaps it would be useful for the committee if we just literally provide you with a schedule of those types
and alongside that type, the action we're taking to eradicate.
Yeah, that would be really useful to get a breakdown on that.
Sorry, Cindy, that's some work for you.
No, that's fine, that's fine. I can come in just on a couple of points there, but I'm conscious of time.
How quickly can you come in on those points?
Literally 30 seconds. I think one of the biggest changes for our residents is that they used to put rubbish bags and recycling bags all in one dustbin or all in one wheel bin.
The crews are, whichever crew arrives first, are having to rummage through the dustbin to find the relevant bags for that material stream that they're collecting.
And so on occasion they might miss a bag right at the bottom. That is something that we need to address, but we do know that that happens.
Obviously, there's things around residents have got used to using wheeled bins, but from a health and safety perspective, we cannot collect directly manually from a wheeled bin because they are designed to be lifted and we don't have the lifting mechanism on the vehicles.
And the other thing is that whilst a resident might be reporting that their rubbish has
been missed, they're actually reporting it as recycling or food waste.
So there does need to be some engagement and education around how to report missed collections
correctly because some are coming through and they're not the correct material.
Thank you, Ms Gardner.
And yeah, it would definitely be useful to have that breakdown that was mentioned and
we can sort of see these more problem areas.
Are there any more comments on the report?
Okay.
So is that noted?
All right.
We've got one minute left.

9 Environment OSC Work Programme (Paper No. 25-209)

Final item.
Callum, would you like to quickly take it away?
I will be mercifully brief.
The report in front of you sets out the way that the committee will be developing their
work programs, so what goes on the committee's agendas in future.
The idea is that we don't discuss those items now, we do that at a session between committees
where we can have a bit more discourse and it's easier.
I'm seeking dates currently from the opposition speaker, the chair and deputy chair to have
that and I will then invite the rest of the committee as optional attendees if you can
make it, that's great.
If you can't, please feedback through your relevant Councillor and we'll keep everybody
updated between committees via email.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you.
Any questions on that?
No?
Excellent, we've got a minute to spare still.
That concludes the business of tonight's meeting.
Thank you everyone for your attendance and good night.