Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Thursday 3 July 2025, 7:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Thursday, 3rd July 2025 at 7:30pm 

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  1. Webcast Finished

1 Minutes of the Previous Meeting

Hello, good evening everybody.
Welcome to tonight's finance committee.
My name is Councillor Stock and I'm chair of the finance committee and it's my pleasure
to welcome you all this evening.
I think before I start, as you know, I'm the new chair of this committee and I did want
to acknowledge and thank my predecessor as chair, Councillor Critchard.
We are fortunate that she's going to remain with us on this committee and take up the
role as deputy chair.
So I'm sure all members would like to join me in thanking Councillor Critchard for steering
us through this committee over the past two years and agree that we note thanks to her
in the minutes.
Is that agreed by everybody?
Thank you very much, members of the committee.
Now I'll ask you all please to introduce yourselves. I'll go through you in alphabetical order, please so counselors counselor crichard
Got how I have to do this hi, my name is Anna Marie crichard
I am a labor counselor for tooting backward and the deputy chair of this committee
Counselor apps
Hello, my name is Sara apps. I'm a counselor for Shaftesbury in Queenstown Ward, and this is my first time on this committee
Welcome, Councillor Habs. Councillor Belton.
Good evening, Tony Belton, Battersea Park Ward in Battersea.
Thank you, Councillor Corner.
Councillor Corner, 9th Ward in Battersea.
Councillor Fraser.
Thank you, Councillor Fraser, South Ballum.
Councillor Graham.
Peter Graham, Councillor Fawnsworth Common and opposition Speaker for Finance.
Councillor Hedges.
Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Ballum Ward and also opposition spokesperson for Business,
Culture and the VCS.
Thank you and Councillor Richard Jones.
Good evening Councillor Allynn Richards -Jones, Councillor for Northcote Ward in Battersea
and Leader of the Opposition.
Thank you very much everybody. Welcome. And I think we have apologies, I think for lateness
from Councillor Lee and I'd also like to welcome to committee Councillor Ireland, our cabinet
member for finance. Thank you. And I think we also apologies for lateness, I believe
from Councillor Akinola, our cabinet member for the voluntary sector business engagement
and culture. Hopefully she'll join us later on this evening. We also have a number of
officers present who will introduce themselves when they address the committee.
And we also have a guest who's coming to join us this evening to share their thoughts on the first paper that we're considering.
Moving on then to the substantive agenda, we have the minutes of the previous meeting.
And regarding those minutes, I do propose that we defer their agreement until the next committee meeting.
because one actually looked online there appears to be a discrepancy as a result
of an administrative error in the draft minutes that are online. I think that the
minute for item 3 and the minute for item 4 have been duplicated. I think a
different version I think was shared with the chair, previous chair and the
opposition speaker so because those have been published online I think it's right
that we make sure that everybody understands the correct version and we
will have them uploaded and we'll confirm them in the October meeting.
Very sensible.
Agreed.
Thank you very much.
Moving on, then, to Item 2, declarations of interest.

2 Declarations of Interests

Are there any declarations of either pecuniary, other, or non -registable interests?
No?
Thank you very much, members.
Okay.

3 Universal Credit Migration and Council Tax Reduction Scheme (Paper No. 25-236)

In that case, then, we'll move on to Item 3 and start the substantive agenda.
So that's a paper 25 -236 on universal credit migration and our council tax reduction scheme.
So a new council tax reduction scheme was introduced by the council on the 1st of April
2024 and a national migration of universal credit, as you all know, members, is ongoing.
And I know at the time that the new council tax reduction scheme was introduced, members
were keen to have an update following implementation to understand how it delivered against its
key objectives. So I'm pleased that Alex Wilson, our Director of Revenue Services,
is here to provide us with that update and I'm also pleased to welcome Jeremy
Sundell, the Chief Executive Officer of Citizens Advice Wandsworth, and thank you
Mr. Sundell for joining us this evening. I appreciate you taking up your time to
do so. So it's proposed that the committee will hear from Mr. Sundell and
he'll give an independent perspective on how to support the Council on the
support that the council has offered for the universal credit migration and also the introduction
of the council tax reduction scheme.
And I understand he's going to share some short case studies demonstrating the impact
on residents and hopefully this can open up a debate so we can reflect on how well we're
doing and how we could possibly be doing things better if we could.
So hopefully that is agreed.
So I'll first of all hand over to Ms. Wilson to introduce the report initially.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair.
Yes, I'm Alex Wilson, Director of Resources, and I'm here to present the report.
And on my right, I'm supported by my colleague, Peter Ford, who's Head of Technical Support.
And I also have Chris Carmen, who heads up the Housing Benefits Team and is joining us online this evening.
As Council Stock said, we're also really fortunate to have Jeremy Sandell here to give his perspective,
and I'll hand over to him shortly.
As Council Stock said, UC migration started in April 2024 as part of the national rollout plan
to move legacy benefits like housing benefit onto Universal Credit.
We took a report to Finance Committee back in February 2024 explaining why this was happening
and our plans for mitigating some of the risks for those individuals affected.
The first part of the report provides an update on the migration and a summary of some of
the support that we've been providing over the last 14 months and that support to individuals
to make sure that they could migrate smoothly and to help protect them against the risks
of hardship as a result of the migration process.
So just in terms of some key points I wanted to highlight, 98 % of just less than 4 ,300 households who were due to migrate have now done so.
We have approximately 94 households that haven't migrated yet in accordance with the DWP timescale.
And we're working with the DWP to understand why this is.
So whilst we know the DWP have been working to a timetable, they have shared with us that
some of the migration notices have been delayed, so we do acknowledge that there will be some
stragglers.
Aside from that, we've been closely monitoring the caseload and alongside voluntary sector
partners like Citizens' Advice, we've been supporting residents as part of the migration
process so they don't lose out on their benefits or their entitlement to claim transitional
relief. The final cohort to migrate are those in receipt of employment and support allowance
and they'll be migrating between now and March 2026. Then the second part of the report
summarises the findings of our annual review of the Council Tax Reduction Scheme. A new
status banner scheme was introduced in April 2024 and one of the reasons for doing this
was to mitigate some of the impact of UC migration by creating a more simple scheme which was
less volatile to changes in income. The new CTR scheme was devised and modelling undertaken
using a set of defined objectives and as I said one of those was about making it more
simple and less difficult to administer but it was also about protecting the households
who are already in receipt of CTR under the old scheme, and also making it more generous
to some of our most financially vulnerable households.
In real terms, the scheme has cost more than we did originally projected, and the reasons
for this are explained in paragraph 39 of the report.
What we have seen is a 6 .6 % increase in caseload, mostly within our WA1, which is our working
age vulnerable cohort, and you can see that in table four of the report.
That's not unsurprising given that national statistics show a significant increase in
the number of people in receipt of disability benefits.
So the CTR scheme is designed to provide the maximum level of support for the most vulnerable
households in Wandsworth, and so changes to caseload numbers in that WA1 working age vulnerable
category will have the largest financial impact comparative to the other working age groups.
So aside from this, whilst the annual review found that in the most part the scheme met
its original objectives, we recognize we've still got quite a bit of work to do around
the automation of processes to try and reduce the administration costs so we can offset
that against the overall cost of the scheme.
And that's part of an ongoing project which we hope will lead to significant automation
in the next six months.
And then the final thing I just wanted to mention is about the fact that in hindsight
we probably shouldn't have hard -coded financial values into the income thresholds but allowed
those to be adjusted outside the scheme design.
If we don't allow the flexibility to make inflationary increases, for example, there's
risk that some households will fall away from support where their income levels tip over
the thresholds.
So that's something that we need to consider for the future.
So that's all I wanted to say.
So I now have the pleasure of handing over to Jeremy.
It would if I turned it on.
You can probably hear me without it.
Up this end of the table, we've also got the air con, so would you be able to speak
nice and loud?
I'll do my best.
So thank you for inviting me along.
So Citizens Advice Wandsworth, just as context, we see something like 1200 to 1400 residents
a month.
Disproportionately we see people with disabilities and long -term health conditions, 60 % of our
clients have either a disability or a long -term health condition.
That's a figure that's grown every year over the last five years.
We also disproportionately see black members of the community in Wandsworth, and those
are things which relate to financial inequality in the country and match that.
Most of what we do, therefore, is crisis support, advice on welfare and benefits, advice on
debt.
That's what we do these days.
It's not general advice in the way that people sometimes perceive.
We worked, and so coming on to why I'm here specifically, we worked really closely with
Alex and colleagues over managed migration because we knew that the biggest likelihood
of a problem was that somebody would walk through our door at Battersea Library or Roe
Hampton and say, I haven't got any money this week.
And that was the ultimate impact of not engaging with the process of managed migration.
And in fact, that happened in very, very few cases.
I know of two people where that was the case.
There are two challenges with that.
Obviously the obvious ones, you're there, you've got no money immediately.
It would also mean that anybody in that situation had lost any transitional benefits or migrated
benefits they had, so they would be significantly worse off.
The amount we can do afterwards to try and change and rectify that is incredibly limited.
That's why the process of working through this was really, really important.
Catching people when they got the letters, making sure that they would engage.
We run nationally a Help to Claim line, which is for first -time claimants,
for universal credit, which includes people moving over.
Anybody complicated gets bounced back straight to us in Wandsworth where we deal with them directly and support them through.
And I'll talk you through one case of that.
I've got two or three, but they get quite long and complicated.
But we saw a lot of people coming to us.
So a colleague of mine, I assisted a long standing Citizens' Advice client
who had cerebral palsy in his hard of hearing, hearing aids in both ears.
He couldn't use the Help to Claim line due to this impairment.
I assisted him making the claim and requesting contact in writing via journal or text,
rather than universal credit calling the client, as he could not communicate.
The client gets stressed very easily, so I explained everything to him about what to expect
and what to take to his appointment, which included ID, proof of address, etc.
Added to this, I helped the client apply for personal independent payments,
which have been in the news quite a lot recently.
He was only on a DLA mobility component
and to get the daily living component
before making the universal credit claim.
What this did was it gave him a disability premium entitlement
and he then got the transitional protection
that we were just speaking about.
And the other one which I'll mention very briefly,
the case study is quite long, so I'm not going to read it all,
but is a single adult who is severely disabled
and lived with his state pension age mother.
He was getting employment support allowance.
He was really nervous about what moving over to universal credit might mean, as was his
mother.
So we had to work really closely with the job centre.
Plus, they tried to arrange an appointment for him at the office, which he wasn't able
to do, so we worked to make sure he got a home visit.
And our advisor also helped to review all of his awards so that we made sure that he
was absolutely maximised in terms of his income.
So the people we're dealing with really struggle with the system and have a significant chance
of both losing out financially and also ending up in severe financial straits.
50 % of the clients who come to us with debt problems
are already in a negative budget once we've gone through
their rent, their utilities bills, their food bill.
They already then don't have enough to live on.
So anything we can do to maximize somebody's income
and to minimize their outgoings
makes a really significant difference.
And I'm really grateful to my colleagues
who do that work every day.
Again, just as a bit of context,
we have 100 people work for Citizens Advice.
One's worth, 40 of them we pay, and 60 of them do it
because they want to contribute to their local community,
adding value as well.
One of those cases was a volunteer adviser,
one was a paid member of staff.
I want to mention a little bit then about council tax reduction, if I may.
The first thing I'd say is the fact that it doesn't come up
as an individual issue for us does mean
that the process is simple and straightforward.
I asked one of our caseworkers who supports clients what they thought of it, because we
don't get people coming in just saying, I said, I always find the CTR application process
very straightforward and efficient.
It's noticeable that the benefits team are mindful of the claimant's journey and have
made improvements and are listening.
So I think that's a really strong endorsement for how it works process wise.
It is a generous scheme compared to other local authorities and I think that's really important.
We're potentially looking at some pretty dramatic changes to the benefits people entitled to coming up.
So anything that supports families and residents on low income is really, really to be welcomed.
The only other thing I wanted to mention in relation to that was the council tax enforcement
side of things, which can be the most traumatic bit for local residents, particularly as and
when bailiffs are involved.
We've worked closely with the council, along with other local agencies, to improve that
process and to protect the most vulnerable people.
There is currently a government consultation on council tax enforcement
and I'd like to ask Wandsworth Borough Council to respond to that.
It's asking for some things which are already in place,
like the options for 12 -month payments,
vulnerability assessment.
It's also asking that when somebody misses a payment,
they don't immediately become liable for the whole debt.
And that, you know, I know it's really, really important for people to engage with the process,
but we also work with a lot of people with, for example, mental health needs, who find
things like letters and phone calls quite stressful.
So engaging with the process can also be difficult for people.
We work to support them and to get them into channels that work for them.
But it's a really difficult process for people when that starts to go wrong.
And as I said, I would acknowledge that the council are doing, the colleagues and officers
are doing a lot to make that process as fair and supportive as possible.
But it's a journey one.
Thank you very much Mr Sandell and thank you very much Ms Wilson for your introduction
and thank you for your kind of full reflections and some case studies there.
So I propose to go to some questions to Mr Sandell first if that's okay and then we'll
gather those together and deal with those and then I'll take some questions to Ms Wilson
as there might be some opportunities to reflect any further on what Mr. Sandel shares with
us.
So can I ask for any questions for Mr. Sandel first of all?
Councillor Cornyn.
Yeah, thank you, Chair.
I'm really interested in the Council's relationship with Citizens' Advice Bureau.
I do have some personal interest in this because my mother for many years was a CAB volunteer
and I know she took a huge amount of pride in kind of helping people that are often at their lowest
step. So it's really interesting to see how the council works with CAB. And thank you for the
presentation. I think it's really valuable to have people come from organizations like the CAB to
explain to the committee the value they bring. I guess my question is twofold. Firstly, what
How tangible approaches has the CAB seen in terms of ways that local authorities can perhaps
reduce the impact on that council tax collection enforcement?
Are there examples we could take from other local authorities, particularly within central
London?
And the second question is, and this is perhaps a little bit cheeky, but the council actually
has a KPI on Citizens Advice Bureau and the number of people offered advice through the
CAB.
It's detailed on page 112 and for the year 24 -25, 11 ,833 people were offered advice through
CAB in Wandsworth, which is over 2 ,000 above the target of 9 ,500.
Could we have an explanation of what the implications are for that?
And to what extent is it a good thing that that many people are actually seeking advice from the CAB?
Thank you. Mr. Sandalio, to answer those two questions.
Sure, so the first one in terms of good enforcement, I mean
the worst thing for people is obviously having a bailiff turn up on the door.
So anything that can be done to prevent that is what,
and it requires resource, right?
It is cheaper and easier to hand over assessment
and collection to bailiffs,
but the outcome is on people's lives.
There are other methods, including things like
an attachment to benefits or an attachment to earnings.
Nobody's going to thank anybody for giving them
an attachment to benefits or an attachment to earnings,
but it's better than a bailiff turning up
and making those decisions.
I think also, you know, I know full well that where people can't pay,
giving them a criminal record, taking that through the county court system,
is unfair and just silly, really.
So it's kind of making sure that those conversations happen
so that people pay what they can afford and what they should pay
and that the council kind of collects effectively
but also doesn't punitively affect people who can't afford to pay.
In terms of the second question, I sometimes say, you know, we're an independent charity,
right?
There are 280 citizens and vices in the country.
They're all independent charities and there's a national body.
And we're just one of them, but we are the best, right?
And there are reasons for that.
We do a lot of work to make sure that we don't just expect people to know who we are or where
we are, that we're out working with the community, that we run projects.
We help to support funding for advice workers in small community grassroots organizations
in the borough, in Battersea and Tooting, for example.
We run Advice First Aid, which I know some of you are aware of.
We were very much groundbreaking in terms of our links with the local food banks.
So we go out of our way to be where people are.
We go because we get compared to other local authority areas a generous settlement from
Wallonsworth which I believe is a good investment for the borough as well as for us. That means we're
able to leverage in quite a lot of funding from other sources so our annual income is just over
two million this year which is about as big as any single borough citizens advice that I'm aware of.
Bringing in all that extra work means that the stuff that we're contracted to do, we
can go above and beyond that.
We would really struggle on, I'm not going to say just, but on the Council's contribution
alone to reach the targets that we reach.
But by leveraging in those other services, we do two things.
We overperform, I guess, in that sense.
But what we also do is we make sure that we're out there where people are.
My son stopped now, thankfully, but he used to say to me,
so Dad, how is it in the Samaritans?
I said, I don't know, because I work for Citizens Advice.
And I don't expect young people to know who Citizens Advice are.
I don't expect people who've moved to the UK from other countries
to know who Citizens Advice are.
So I make sure that we're out there as a service working with those communities.
Thank you.
Councillor Critchard?
Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming to speak to us.
As you were talking, I hadn't realised quite how many volunteers you have,
and I think we probably all want, as councillors, want to extend our thanks to those volunteers.
And it also made me think, I think Mr Evans will know this,
that there is a team's category for the civic awards, isn't there?
Perhaps what we should do is think about entering your team if they haven't already been entered.
Councillor Critchard, do you have a question?
Yes, I do. But I thought that was quite important too. What I was going to say is I noticed,
excuse me, the other thing I was going to say around this is that from my own experience
with residents who've come to me with debt, that our own team tend to be very good once
they know, and I think you're right about the knowing to do this. And from case work
I have the problems that happen when people just have no money.
So I'm very grateful for all of that.
What I think I'd like to ask you is this,
is we've all been told that the scheme is very easy to understand.
You indicated in your answer that that was the case.
The CTR scheme, is that true?
Definitely happier with it?
Our volunteers are great.
Yeah, yeah.
And yes, it is a genuinely easy to follow and understand scheme.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really obvious if something's not working,
because we hear about it and I hear about it pretty much
constantly.
The fact that it doesn't show up on our radar,
and the fact that colleagues are then
saying when we're supporting clients,
it's a really easy 15 minute job,
I think underlines the fact it is genuinely easy to support people access.
Picking up the other thing you were talking about is the enforcement.
Obviously the remits and the way this committee is working have changed.
Is that something that you feel would be worth the committee feeding back to cabinet
that actually what we could do with is definitely looking very hard at the way we take any enforcement on our Council?
tax for the future to try and minimize further disruption to residents?
It's a really key area actually and I think being entirely candid, I think it's an area
which can seem at odds with the Council's approach in other areas. I think you know
Wandsworth generally has the reputation with residents of being a caring Council and being
a responsive council in relation certainly to the work we're doing. It's hard right,
you know housing's a really hard area but we all know they're just aren't the properties,
it's a difficult compromise to make. We work closely with colleagues around that. I think
a bailiff turning up on your door sent by the council is at odds with some of those
values and I think anything that could be done to minimise the need for that is a good
thing.
Thank you Mr Sandell.
It may be that the cabinet member wants to share any thoughts on our involvement with
the consultation later.
Councillor Apps.
Thank you very much and my question kind of follows on quite neatly.
Firstly, it was good to hear that you kind of generally kind of being supportive of our
approach and Wandsworth and the work we've done together. But if there was one change
that you could make to our service, to make it an improvement, what would that be? And
I'm thinking mainly about how we support residents. And secondly, you mentioned about the council
tax enforcement consultation that's going on at the moment. What do you think would
be the, you know, how would you want us to respond to that? Where do you think improvements
can be made to council tax enforcement.
That also draws in, I guess, to what you're saying about Wandsworth Council's approach
as well as the government consultation.
Thank you.
The first one is easy, the second one is easier so I'll do that.
The consultation outlines some pretty good and reasonable approaches and I think largely
to be supportive of the direction of travel that's being proposed is right.
I think in particular, so it's asking for particularly the debt not to be wholly considered
consolidated immediately, that a payment is missed.
And I think the other thing that's really important in terms of that is vulnerability
assessments really and making sure.
I know at one point in time, and I know this is an area that's been changed,
vulnerability assessments were also kind of outsourced to the bailiffs to do,
which I think is a pretty clear conflict of interest, right?
So it requires a resource, right?
How do we work with...
You know, Alex's team did an incredibly good job to identify pretty much every family or household in the borough
who are going to be, you know,
go through the managed migration process.
Officers work really hard to know and support
and to go out, and we're getting down to
the kind of numbers of people we can actually
just go and see between us.
It is that good a number.
You can go and visit them.
Someone can knock on the door and say,
have you done it?
We're into those sorts of numbers.
So I think being able to keep putting in the resource
that enables that approach is really just what we need.
I think there's more of that.
I mean, you know, I've worked across a lot of
local authorities and a lot of areas in my career,
and it is really noticeable.
If this sounds at all trialed or staged, it really isn't.
It's really noticeable how colleagues who work
for Wandsworth Borough are keen to work with us
and support us and to make sure the residents are well supported.
And that direction of travel, being able to understand what the challenges are,
you know, we're impartial. I'm happy to say we're impartial on the side of the client,
but we're impartial. So, you know, explaining why a decision's been made, even if somebody doesn't
like it, is fine if we can work with the officers to understand that. And I think it's just,
The only thing I asked for was just a continuation development of that relationship
Thank you, was there any other questions I think
Councillor Fraser and then I'll come back to you Councillor corner
Thank you, and thank you very much for your comments
I think probably worth noting I've had a couple of residents who've come to me for advice surgeries
Who may have spoken to on your advisors in the past as part of to me?
they're talking to me about and they've all been very complimentary of the discussions
they've had. So it sounds like you have a great team to be proud of. But just in the
interest of kind of continuous improvement, are you aware or are your colleagues aware
of anything that you hear about on the grapevine or that might be happening in all the local
authority areas that we could learn from or implement at all?
I think one of our challenges as a citizen's advice is that we've been very much at the
forefront of things.
We were among the very first to have food bank services.
You know, I'll go back to it, Advise First Aid, working with grassroots groups started
here.
What that means is that some of those things are reaching the end of their funding lives.
I know that the Council is currently looking at how advice services are commissioned and the
services that we provide. I mean, I think that's where that continuous improvement discussion kind
of takes place. It's a changing environment. I mean, you know, we had COVID and that put people
through really difficult and traumatic times. We had the cost of living crisis. Wandsworth's
response was second to none, but that put people through difficult and challenging times.
I'm sitting now looking at I don't know what will happen to the welfare benefits system.
It could be we're looking at situations where people who already come to us with deficit
budgets or just about breaking even could be 400 pounds a month in deficit before they
even start.
It might not be right because that's a really changing picture all the time.
It's just really for us to be trying to some ways get ahead of that to make sure that people,
you know, the choices people end up making is not having dinner tonight, like sitting
in a cold freezing flat and not being able to go out, trying to make sure that people
don't have to make those decisions, you know, in a place like Wandsworth in 2025 really
is the challenge.
Thank you very much.
Now, one last question then from Mr. Cornyn, and then we'll move to questions to Miss Wilson.
Yeah, brilliant, thank you. Just really a clarification question and thank you for your answer related to the KPIs and the contract.
I just wanted to get really clear just from my understanding. If the CAB is advising 2000 more people than the contract allows,
what are the, in really simple terms, what are the implications of that? Does that mean you have to roll back on your,
what sounds like really valuable community engagement work?
Does it mean people receive fewer contact hours
and perhaps by extension a slightly less good service?
Could you just provide in really simple terms
what the implications of having to serve
that additional 2 ,000 people are?
Yeah, I can, it's great.
Unfortunately for me it's quite easy
to answer that question, right?
I can't stop people walking through the front door.
They're going to walk through whatever.
If we get referrals from partners, if we know people don't have food, etc., we're going to prioritize that.
So those two methods, referrals from partners and walk -ins, just always get seen.
What that means effectively is we don't answer the phone often enough.
So people might be waiting for phone calls for 45 minutes, etc.
We have quiet at times, right?
But the actual outcome is that the phone doesn't get picked up as often.
Thank you for sharing that and thank you very much for sharing your experience so candidly.
I think that's been really helpful for us to hear. Feel free to stay at the table and
we'll move on to some questions to Miss Wilson. Councillor Critchard.
Oh, right. Thank you very much, Miss Wilson. You've probably been expecting one of us to
ask this. The scheme is obviously great and has been working very well but there was a
slight error which has meant that we've, it's cost us slightly more than expected and you
explain the reasons in the report. Can you tell us what action has been done to resolve
the issue and what response have we had from those who haven't had their, have had a claim
last year and then heard this year that they haven't got one because of the mistake with
a disability? Thank you.
Yeah, when we identified the error towards the end of the year when we reviewed the sort
of end -of -year statistics for the scheme.
We identified that there were 256 cases that we,
that had earned income in the WA1 category.
And of those, 225 of them had an income
that was over and above the income caps.
The reason being is, unfortunately in the implementation,
we hadn't correctly explained that the income caps need to go into that category as well
and so it meant that there were those 225 cases that had received benefit that we shouldn't
do.
We identified them, we wrote to every one of those households and explained the error
that had occurred and that they had received benefit that it wasn't the intention of the
original scheme to provide them.
Following that, we cancelled the claims from the 31st of March, 24, so at the end of the
first year, and advised them that they would not, unless there was a change in their circumstances,
they would not receive CTR in the 25, 26 year.
Following those 225, sorry it wasn't, so it was 225 and then when we went through those
225 cases we found within the system that there were 30, 29 of them that were actually
entitled it was just the income that was declared on the system was incorrect.
So in total there were 196 claims that were wrong.
We cancelled them, we wrote out to them explaining and following that letter to all those households
we received 11 requests for that decision to be reviewed.
We looked at those 11 requests for review.
Two further cases provided us with information to say that their income was of a level where
they would have been entitled under the scheme and of the other nine cases we wrote back
and said unfortunately this was the scheme and they were offered a right as they're allowed
to further review but we have had no further responses from many of those nine households.
So that sounds like the resident, many of the residents had very just a very lucky windfall and
were happy that they've had a lucky windfall and we didn't ask for it back. Yeah which I think
would have been unwise. Thank you.
Yes, Captain Richard Jones.
Thank you. Did I follow you correctly that you said initially 225 cases were identified,
but then 29 were found to have entered their income incorrectly, so it was 196 you wrote
The reported page, yeah, the reported page 13, paragraph 47, gives a figure of 256 cases.
256, sorry, 256 was the initial caseload that we identified.
As we segmented that down, 31 of that, originally of that original 256,
we had information to say that the income on the assessment was incorrect and we could change them so they came into entitlement.
Then we looked at the 225 and as we were going through and cancelling those claims,
we had further information to say that another, I've got my numbers now, 29 of those would also fall into entitlement.
So, we recalculate those and that left a final total of 196 claims that had to be cancelled
because they were receiving the incorrect benefit.
Got you.
Thank you.
And just another question on this, which is, I guess, the council was in a pretty awkward
position when it discovered this mistake a year after the notices would have been sent
out.
And that was probably a factor in why the council has decided to write this off, was
that residents that thought they were entitled to 100 % discount had relied on that fact for
a year in planning their finances.
Perhaps had, I guess a question is why was the review carried out a year after the notices
had been sent out?
Because potentially if the review had picked something up a month or two after the mistake,
there would have been a chance to salvage the financial cost of the council.
I mean when we implemented the scheme we did carry testing and review out of the scheme at that time.
Not all those 196 cases would have been live at the start.
So some of them came on to benefit during the course of the year.
But yeah, we missed this implementation issue at the start when we did our initial testing on that.
We did the review at the end of the year to see if we have as much information of how much cost was, etcetera, with the various levels.
So yeah, they could have been in room review, but unfortunately we didn't pick this up.
Ms Wilson, do you want to comment?
It was just to add that I think one of the things that masked the error for us was that
we were monitoring, continually monitoring caseload data, but because we were expecting
an increase in the numbers of vulnerable households in receipt of council tax reduction, because
we knew there was a significant increase in the number of people who were claiming disability
benefit, it wasn't a surprise to us to see those caseload figures increasing. So it masked
the error for us. But like you say, I mean, ideally it would have been helpful to have
picked that up sooner than the year and then we would have had a chance to recruit it.
But as it was, and it was our error, it was a decision we took not to recruit.
Thank you.
Will there be changes?
I'm just thinking, this is my final question on this.
Will there be changes to the monitoring going forwards?
Because, I'm not going to labor the point,
but $200 ,000 is a lot of money.
And additional resource to catch that
pays for itself for potential future errors.
I mean, we have tested the systems now.
We're working with the NEC who delivered the system
to make sure we've rectified those errors within the system.
And whilst that's been happening,
we've had a manual work around to make sure,
obviously, there's no other claims
that have slipped through the net,
and we'll do a double check of that, but absolutely.
It's a lesson learned when you're implementing a scheme.
Sometimes things happen, but it's definitely something
we would take through to you know any further review of the CTR scheme we would
make sure we've done that all of that testing in advance of the scheme going
live and then I'm going from that just to make sure there's nothing to be
placed thank you miss listen just to be confirm are there any other questions on
that part of the report about implementation and and error no okay in
that case I'll move on to Councillor corner
Just on the...
Sorry, is this still on council tax reduction scheme?
That's okay, I've just got Councillor Belton eager to be called, but I'm sure your question and your answer will be quick.
I'm sure they're making that small.
Okay. Thank you very much for coming to me before, Councillor Belton.
Just on the migration part of the paper,
I know you mentioned that 94 families have not been migrated.
We're investigating why that is.
Do we know exactly who those families are and what support will we offer in the past,
now or in the future to those families for any financial hardship they encounter as a result of this?
I think I might refer to Chris Carmen.
He's waiting patiently online to take that if he can.
If not, I'll respond.
No, that's fine. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you, Chris.
Yes, we can hear you.
Thanks.
Okay, good. Hello, everybody. I'm Chris Cowan. I'm the assessment benefits manager.
Yes, we know specifically who they are and yes, they will all be provided with support on a one -to -one level.
It's not a case that they would lose out. It's just a case that they haven't transferred over.
so they'll still have the opportunity to have their transitional protection and any extra benefit that they would
have had if they'd migrated already
It's just a case of helping them move through the process so that they're still getting housing benefit at the moment
They'll get universal credit eventually and we'll move them across as we have done everybody else. It's just that they're later in the process. That's all
Thank You councillor Bell
Thank you.
First of all, apologies, my eyesight being what it is.
I didn't know that you were acknowledging me.
Sorry about that.
Sorry, before I get this completely wrong, which I am very capable of doing, are the
overall figures about the number of people getting benefit in this paper?
Number one.
Number two are the figures about how many qualify under these four headings that you've
got somewhere or other.
You know the ones I mean, the ones that talk about no income but children and all that
sort of stuff.
Are those individual figures?
I assume you're talking about the figures in table 4, which break down the different
categories and the caseload numbers.
They are all sort of individual households.
And we don't at any point analyze, it's obviously easy for the category one variety, but we
don't at any point analyze how many human beings we're talking about here.
Obviously the couples, you can double the number at least, and then there are children,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
With council tax reduction schemes, it's normally done on households because that's how council tax works.
It's a charge to a household.
That's not what I'm interested in.
Have we got...
We don't have those figures.
They could be provided.
It's easy to calculate because we hold the data of the household sizes.
It wasn't relevant for us.
That's what we didn't feel.
Well, from your point of view.
From my point of view, I've been a councillor for a few weeks now and then,
and I quite often get asked what's the proudest thing I've achieved.
Now, I don't know, but Councillor Ireland's occasionally given me estimates here.
Add this up, we're talking 10 ,000 households, lots of singles,
was so, we must be talking about 20 ,000 at least.
And when I am asked about what's the proudest thing
you've achieved, especially on this council since 22,
and I would say removing 20 ,000 of the least well off people
in the borough from the burden of the council tax
is right up there, number one.
It's so important in my rating that we should not,
So ignore those figures.
We should not ignore those figures.
It would also be quite useful if we had geographical basis
of seeing exactly where, not exactly where,
but I can imagine there's a preponderance
in what used to be the old Latchmere,
half in Battersea Park, half of it in Falkenbrook,
also in Roehampton, but other places as well.
And we've got lots and lots and lots of figures
on Mr Evans would know all about it,
special enumeration areas, I just think that would be
really interesting and I'd be really interested
in the total impact of the money saved from the point
of view of the people concerned and frankly,
customers in the borough.
So one thing I wanted to mention just very briefly
and I guess I'm known for being a bit of a pedant in some places,
somewhere or other it says remain affordable.
It does say it actually in paragraph 50,
as long as it remains affordable.
From the point of view of 20 ,000 people,
it's got to remain affordable.
I mean, whatever happens to council tax in the near future
as a result of government reviews,
it's got to, from my perspective, remain affordable.
This is so important to, frankly, what we've achieved, that I think it's that important.
I like the looseness, if I can call it that, of these categories.
I mean, I think that looseness of these categories, if you made it as tight as I'm sure lots of
auditors would have argued for, then the comment we got from the CAB wouldn't have applied,
because it wouldn't be simple, and it wouldn't be easy to understand, and it wouldn't be
quick to administer, and it would cost lots of money and administration as well.
So the people who devise the scheme on that basis, I think, deserve a lot of credit, and
I'm massively, massively in favour of this.
Stend.
Thank you very much, Councillor Belton. I think that was a comment but also a request
for, there is a way for us to understand how many people rather than just households.
Ms Wilson, do you have a response to that point? And then just to be clear, Councillors,
I've got Councillor Fraser, Councillor Graham, Councillor Apps and Councillor Hedges.
We could probably provide some geographical data from the low -income family tracker, Councillor
because that will give a pictorial view of where households who are in receipt of CTR are living.
So that might be useful and happy to share that with you.
Thank you, Ms Wilson. We'll note that after. Thank you.
Councillor Fraser.
Thank you very much. We've talked a little bit about system and system changes.
So just thinking about the, as in like the IT system, I think, rather than the system.
But just thinking about the future and any potential changes to, essentially to universal
credit, I'm wondering if you're planning to automate any processes and, you know, are
you anticipating savings from changing, from any changes that you might do in that area
at all?
As I said in my introduction, one of the objectives of the CTR review was about creating this
more simple scheme, easier to understand for residents but also easier to administer.
And we haven't quite got there, so we have been able to automate some processes but not
all.
So we've got a project that's ongoing at the moment to do a much wider scale process automation.
And we hope that that will all be complete within the next six months.
And that will take out a lot of the manual processing.
And if it does that, obviously, the cost of administering the scheme will go down.
and that's the offset against the expenditures
that sort of offsets some of the additional cost
and what it does allow is us also to free up staff
to do other things and that includes supporting people
who are going through the migration process,
supporting people who are struggling financially
so we're able to do more proactive engagement
with those individuals and to help them improve
their financial positions.
So, you know, it's a win -win for us if we do what it is we're intending to do.
Thank you.
Councillor Graham.
Thank you.
It's good to see Councillor Belton back in his rightful position around this table.
We've missed him over the last year.
I did just want to respond slightly to what he was saying about removing people from the
to pay council tax because the system and the reduction scheme that was inherited did
set it at a very low level.
It was essentially based on the principle that everyone should contribute something
but it should be a level low enough that it's not a burden.
Perhaps in removing everyone from it altogether, the present administration knew where their
government was going on welfare reform, but we'll move on from that.
Well, but I did want to comment on another aspect of this because council tax reduction
is a very good thing.
We've always had a strong scheme here in comparison to other boroughs, but it doesn't
capture everyone who is vulnerable or everyone who is in need.
And that's why we argued last year that when we were looking at those who'd lost
their winter fuel payments that just relying on those who were not in receipt of pension
credit but were getting council tax reduction, that was far too narrow to actually deal with
the problems that were being created.
Now that the government agrees with us that it was far too narrow to deal with the problems
that were being created, will the administration admit that the support they gave last winter
didn't go far enough and that they were wrong to describe it as generous.
And for Councillor Ireland, really.
Councillor Ireland?
I think that's probably a bit... it was generous at the time because...
Question for Councillor Ireland, not for Councillor Critchard.
Councillor Critchard, Councillor Ireland, would you like to...
No, don't agree with that.
Thank you very much.
The cabinet member gives a reason why she doesn't believe that.
Given that, as we've seen, the government now thinks that an income threshold is 35 ,000 in order to protect people,
and the support that was provided here was incredibly small.
At the level that, you know, sort of the same level that we're intervening to put on a bus half the year in Roehampton,
we could have provided a much more generous scheme.
Why didn't we and does she in retrospect think that was a mistake?
We're discussing relying on those who qualify for
council tax reduction to be the only criteria that we applied as to whether
someone might be in need. Thank you Councillor Graham. I'll allow
question. I'm going to ask Councillor Island to answer this question and then we'll move
on because Councillor Island is right, this is a paper on Council tax reduction rather
than the winter fuel payments that were made last Christmas.
We think we set the level at an appropriate rate given the information we had at the time.
We do have one of the most generous Council tax reduction schemes and we stepped in to
help residents who are affected by the restrictions to winter fuel payment. We're very proud of
our record on this. Thank you.
Okay, Councillor Apps.
Thank you.
I actually want to take us back to the issue of universal credit.
I'm sure that everyone here is aware that one of the big issues is the fact that rent
is paid as part of the payment.
And sometimes some residents struggle with rent arrears as a result.
We've actually introduced a financial inclusion officer to help tenants arrange payment for
their rent, which has been helpful to many tenants.
I note that this has come from the cost of living fund, and actually, obviously that's a one off fund.
So it would be really good to understand if there's plans to put that in place on a sort of more,
on an ongoing basis so they can continue to help residents and tenants.
And certainly I would recommend that that is something that we do look at.
Thank you, Councillor Lutz. Ms Wilson?
Thank you for the question. As you say, the post has been funded through the Costalering
Reserve and that's been extended for a further year because, as you say, it's been incredibly
successful in terms of the results that we've got through from that. We're also funding
another three financial inclusion officer posts which are going to sit within council
tax, housing benefits and discretionary support.
And that's being funded through the household support fund, sort of building on that really
good practice that we've seen through the work of the financial inclusion team in the
rent collection service.
The temporary post, but the point of doing that is about using those individuals to help
embed that particular approach within these services.
So as I say, taking the learning and the best practice
from the rent collection service.
And the overall aim is to make that become
part of custom and practice.
So recognizing the benefits that a much more proactive
and supportive approach can take in terms
of how we help households who are struggling.
And I mean, one of the big things
about reducing the risk of them going into debt so it fundamentally some of
the resources in there at the moment it's it's a sort of short -term resource
but it's about longer term changes to how our services are delivered going
forward so we're much more supportive in the way we do things. Thank you
Councillor Apps. Yes very quick so obviously there's a lot of people been
migrating from other benefits, but so that will still be in place for people who are
newly coming onto benefits who maybe recently lost their jobs and are going straight into
universal credit.
Yes, that's correct.
So we've got some additional resource or some of the resource that's been freed up through
the council tax reduction scheme changes have been used to assist with the UC migration
process but we know that that's not sustainable and actually having an additional resource
in there we can do more and that's why we've got the funding to put in an additional post
to try and help as I say embed those processes into what we do.
Thank you.
Councillor Hedges.
Thank you chair.
Before I ask the question, also just wanted to say thank you to Mr. Sandell for all of
his hard work and all of the volunteers that work for Citizens Advice Bureau as well.
So Ms. Wilson, a couple of quick questions.
One is, I understand we did some benchmarking against other boroughs of the scheme back
in September 23 and January 24, I think, were the papers you mentioned before.
It would be great to understand if you're going to be doing a refresh and anything important
you think the committee would benefit from knowing.
And then also, you mentioned about sustainability.
Is this scheme financially sustainable over the medium term?
Thank you.
So in terms of benchmarking, in the report that went to, came to this committee in October
over 2023 when we came to this committee to talk about what we wanted to do around scoping
out a new scheme. It did include some benchmarking data, but it was more about the types of schemes,
so means -tested, status -banding schemes. So we provided some information about what other
London boroughs were using at that time, and then subsequently when we came back to committee,
we could already see that there'd been a step change more towards status bands
banded rather than means tested schemes. I think Peter's got probably some more
data around around the actual the the actual coverage and the support that's
provided because there are a number of local authorities obviously that didn't
didn't do what we did we kind of went against the the tide in creating
something that was more generous, where there were a number of local authorities who did
the opposite because they were looking to make significant cost savings and that was
one of the areas that they decided to do it.
So I don't know if Peter's got anything to add to that.
Yeah, when we revise the CCR scheme we have to advise, oh God, I always get my GLAs and
My LGA's wrong.
The GLA about the scheme because of their influence in the cost.
And their comments when they came back was that they, we were in our scheme very much
different to everyone else by creating a slightly more generous scheme where the direction of
travel across the, I think it was 13 London boroughs that changed their scheme from this
April, from sorry, last April.
So that was a very much, our scheme was very different.
The movement towards banded schemes is the way that local authorities are doing.
But in terms of your question about benchmarking, it's something we do every year.
We look at what the direction of travel is and I'm currently undertaking that exercise of having someone sitting there
going through all the London Borough websites and finding the data that they've got on their schemes
and what their schemes are and how they compare to what Wandsworth has in place.
Then there's a second part of your question I haven't forgotten.
So obviously with a fair funding review it's reasonable to expect that as a council
we might need to review the CTR scheme to assess continued affordability
and there might be difficult decisions to make about what we do there.
I guess if council tax increases, then the cost of the scheme also increases, but there's
a balance, isn't there? It's a really difficult, and I suppose it's probably not something
I can answer here about what direction of travel the council will go in, but it's very
difficult, isn't it, to make a decision that draws back on really, really valuable support
to some of our most vulnerable clients, vulnerable residents.
And it's that balance about continuing
to support vulnerable households and to what extent
we do that versus acknowledging that an increase in council
tax income, there'll be an increase in costs
to people who pay versus which will help to support those that
can't.
Difficult decisions.
Councillor Quiizzi, I'd be happy to call you both, you've already spoken on this item,
but I will call you both and then we'll wrap up the discussion.
Right, thank you very much.
Just picking up on what you said about affordability though, I think the other thing we have to
remember is that our very vulnerable clients, very vulnerable residents, if they're pushed
into negative income, of course then they start going to people like loan sharks
and the whole, their whole life chances become more difficult and then
they require more of our council services. That's a bit of an unquantifiable
benefit but you've got to think about that as well. But my question really was
this is, you picked up right at the end, we talked about, you said one of the
things that you thought we had you on reflection, we should have done was make
I think it was in paragraph 66, made the scheme more flexible so that we could, the officers
could be given some degree of flexibility to change the scheme without having to re -consult
on every single one because the numbers are hard -coded.
Now what I'm going to suggest to the committee, if we can have some words, is that perhaps
we should recommend that the cabinet from this committee, and I hope that
everyone in the room will be happy to do that, is to allow the flexibility
for the director to be able to make small changes to the scheme.
And I understand you can make small changes up if we're to take it down it would need another consultation.
But I think it's a consultation on making the changes,
giving a little bit more control so we don't have to
re -consult every single time. I think have I explained that properly?
Ms Wilson do you want to share some more about your reflections on paragraph 66 and
your reflection at the end of your presentation where you said in
hindsight looking at when we set the scheme a year ago we have hard -coded
income caps and whether we as a council might want to consider a consultation
that allows flexibility on an ongoing basis rather than was what I understand
a consultation year in year out. You know this could be an opportunity as I
understand it for this committee to share their thoughts ahead of a
consultation which would have to happen in the autumn in order to be able to
deliver a scheme in 2026.
This is our opportunity, it seems to me.
If we do want to share any thoughts,
it'd be good to hear a little bit more
from you, Ms. Wilson, as Councilor Critchard says,
and others on the committee.
I think you've probably explained that very well, actually.
I think I said in my summary at the start,
unless we have that flexibility in place
to be able to make those changes,
So, inflationary changes, for example, every year there's a risk that some of our current
CTR claimants will fall out of that cohort because their income thresholds may have just
tipped over the balance.
So it will allow us to be able to reflect that in those income thresholds to make sure
that some of those vulnerable households don't lose out.
So I think that would be incredibly helpful.
Obviously, if there's any decision to change the scheme
the other way, as Councillor Critchard says,
so if you decide to reduce those income levels downwards
to try and make savings on the CTR scheme,
then you would have to go through a formal consultation
to do that, because you'd be fundamentally changing
the principles of the scheme,
and obviously impact people who are already in receipt of CTR adversely.
Thank you, Ms. Wilson. Do you want to come in on this point?
I think from an opposition point of view, we'd be very happy to support an amendment of that kind
on the understanding that it wouldn't be an unfettered delegation of powers,
that it would be defined in terms of CPI or some sort of parameter that kept it at an
inflationary level.
Thank you.
I think, thank you for that support.
I think that sounds sensible.
I think that sounds like that's the direction of travel that generally members of the committee
are supportive of and is reflected in the paper.
So hopefully we can minute that.
Councillor Corner.
Actually, my question has largely been answered by questions that Councillor Zaks and Craig
that's a pretty hard task.
Thank you, Councillor Corner.
My new reflection on the discussion,
thank you very much, councillors,
Ms. Wilson and other officers who've presented
for all their work on this and what is a very generous scheme
that, as Councillor Belton rightly identified,
we can be very proud of that's impacting
over nearly 10 ,000 households and certainly more residents.
And also, I'm very thankful to Mr. Sandell
as other officers and councillors have shared
about his attendance tonight and also the work that the CAB do or Citizens Advice, Wandsworth
do and their staff and volunteers.
My only other reflection of members of the committee from hearing the discussion is that
there clearly is interest in the financial support that we provide as a council to those
that are financially vulnerable and we've got the opportunity as a scrutiny committee
to think about our own work plan and we're going to meet later in the month to discuss
that and I do again wonder because the cost of living as Councillor Apst touched on the
cost of living fund is coming to an end and there are certain projects that have been
funded through that that have got an end, it might be an opportunity for us as this
committee to look more deeply at the support that we provide to those who are financially
vulnerable and we can influence and seek to make some further recommendations to cabinet
on that work in the future.
So perhaps that is something that we can pick up
in the work program session and we can understand
what more we could be doing in this area in the future.
But as I said, thank you very much to all councilors for that.
I don't know if there's any other comments.
I just ask the committee therefore to note the report
because this is for information save for the recommendation
that we will minute.
Yeah.
My question was just about the recommendation.
Do we need to formally say something?
just have it and then will it appear as one of the
actions and the action list from
Yes, I think we can both circulate some wording and
We can put it in the action log as well, which I believe we're starting a new one
Okay, moving on then council is to item for the council's financial results for the year end. I just wanted to say

4 The Council's Financial Results 2024/25 (Paper No. 25-237)

as chair of this committee to thank officers very much for their hard work in preparing the council's statement of accounts for the year end.
I understand those who have finalized on the 30th of June and I've seen that they're already available on the council's website.
And in terms of the out -term position, I think it is a very good position with a small overspend of 0 .6%,
which I think compared to other positions of other local authorities and taking into account the pressures that we know are being faced in a number of different services.
It's a credit to the team who have been able to finalize that out -term position.
So thank you very much and I think I'm handing over to Ms. Berry to introduce the report.
Thank you, Chair. So I'll just give a very brief introduction to this paper,
which comes in front of you at this time of year to summarize the four financial frameworks that the Council works under.
The out -term position, it's been a tough year in terms of the service pressures that
we've seen across a number of the frameworks, but as you say, we've managed to.
I think overall we've done some pretty spot -on budgeting and forecasting within that, which
is particularly pleasing considering the overall position that we're seeing elsewhere in
London in particular.
So just to reference as well that each service committee has already received its own detailed
report on the specifics of its service committee. So they've been discussed at health, housing,
adults, children's, et cetera, already.
Taking the four frameworks in turn, we've had, as you say, a small overspend, an 0 .6 %
overspend on the general fund revenue budget in year. Some of that has been served by high
pressures in adults, children and housing which we've been predicting throughout the
year and we've spoken about this committee before and offset by additional treasury income
which we've been benefiting from for a number of years but actually we're still seeing sustained
returns on that largely because of bank rates but also the very proactive approach that
we're taking to maximising the income from our cash balances. And then also an underspend
on inflation that was unused at the end of the year, largely as a result of the pay award
that was agreed nationally, which was weighted towards lower income staff. So overall, a
small overspend. We've added budget into 25, 26, so into the current financial year to
to try and address some of those demand -led service pressures that we saw coming out in
2024 -25 and obviously we'll keep those under close review and bring those back to this
committee as we go through the year.
The second framework or financial pot I wanted to just quickly talk about was the capital
pot.
The General Fund Capital Pot, we've managed to deliver £79 million worth of investment
in the borough over the past year, which was 99 % of our revised budget for that year.
So, good to see that we have again managed to forecast accurately during the year.
A number of schemes have been invested in and there's a significant capital program coming in the current year as well.
In terms of housing, we've again seen some service pressures in there, particularly in relation to revenue repairs,
which have been a result of a backlog on void properties that we've been dealing with,
proactively trying to bring as many properties back into use as we can, but also very difficult
market in terms of getting contractors to work on those types of properties and we've
seen an increase in costs.
So significant financial pressure on revenue repairs, which we are keeping a close eye
on this year as well.
Capital in the housing revenue account has continued to reduce the level of reserves.
That's a planned level of reserve use, largely linked to the big investment schemes that
we've got around the borough and the Thousand Homes programme, but also in maintaining and
continuing to maintain our existing council stock.
And then finally, the schools budget. We've seen some pressures coming through over the
past few years. We were in a very fortunate position relative to lots of other councils
in terms of our cumulative dedicated schools budget position, but we have seen increased
pressures in the past couple of years, particularly relating to education, health and care plans
for children with special educational needs. We've had an in -year overspend of just over
seven million and that's added to a previous brought forward deficit. So we've now got
20 million pound deficit on the school's budget. Currently that is subject to what's called
a statutory override until 2028. So government is actively looking at how they can help councils
to deal with those deficits which effectively we're seeing across the country.
I think I'll leave it there and happy to take questions if there are any.
Thank you, Ms. Murray. Councillor Graham, I saw you and then Councillor...
Thank you. So in paragraph 28, we've talked about the fair funding review
and national distribution of local authority funding will take funding away from London.
I mean, that's quite an understatement in the context of what we're looking at.
So, in our papers in March, we'd assume 6 million for new homes bonus next financial year,
and 5 million the year after.
We now know that none of that will exist because it's been abolished and there will be no more,
and more to the point that revenue is getting rolled back into the general pot.
But in terms of that general pot, we've then got a fair funding formula that's going to come in,
which is going to massively take away funding from London and take it to places elsewhere.
There is going to be a three -year transitional period for that.
Will that three -year transitional period coincide with the three -year settlement that we're due to get in December?
Yes, that's right.
We will in very short order actually know the extent of the funding problem that's likely
to occur.
So if the government sticks to its current plans, by how much is our funding likely to
fall?
percentage or millions, whichever is easier.
So the government hasn't released its figures.
The government is keen not to release figures until it's actually settled
on some of the detail. So a lot of the modeling that's
happening is happening outside of the government's own model.
The important thing that will impact over that three -year period,
which is, as you say, in line with the settlement and the multi -year settlement
and the spending review is the transitional protection that government has offered to
protect those councils that will lose out overall in cash terms. They've made a very
clear commitment to protect over those three years and they've made it clear that the
majority of councils will get a particular type of protection which is zero percent cash
flow which is effectively guaranteeing that the level of cash that they receive is no
lower than the previous year for those three years. For those that are particularly affected
by the formula changes of which Wandsworth is definitely one of those, they are still
to tell us what they propose that transitional protection to look like. So until we've seen
what that looks like, it's literally impossible to say what the impact will be on Wandsworth
in that three -year period.
But we can say because of the government's consultation response that he's going to assume
that we have set in council tax at the level of 2 ,000 pounds rather than 900 for Band D.
So at the very least, they're assuming that we'll have to double our council tax to make
up a shortfall at the end of that three years.
And in fact, we may have to triple or quadruple our council tax to make up for the lost revenue
due to the fair funding formula.
Is that correct?
So just to be clear, they aren't dictating that the Council doubles Council tax triples
or quadruples.
They're not doing that.
They're using a notional amount of Council tax that's the same across the country within
their formulae and then local decisions about Council tax can still be made and will still
be made.
You're right though that if we are currently expecting the notion of Council tax to be
set at around 2 ,000 pounds across the country for Bandy and we currently charge just under
1 ,000 then it feels right that a doubling of our council tax income is assumed.
It doesn't mean that that's what will happen.
If I could just have one more question because I appreciate that but nevertheless transitional
protection will come to an end after three years.
So at that point there is no extra support and if the government at the same time is
assuming that we're going to have far more revenue than we are if we keep our tax where it is,
is also significantly cutting the amount of money we receive unless we chose to absolutely cut to the bone.
And even if we did, given that most of our services are statutory, we will be forced to increase council tax.
I mean, there is no way around it, and it won't just be a small hike.
It will be a doubling, tripling, quadrupling on the potential of the figures we are seeing.
So, I mean, the point about the three -year transitional protection is absolutely our
lobbying point.
You know, we are doing lots and lots of modeling on this now and proving that a three -year
transitional protection period just doesn't work for Wandsworth is going to be key as
part of that.
We've still got transitional protection in the current funding regime that was introduced
back in 2013.
So 12 years on, we're still being protected from changes that were being proposed.
So to then move to three years, we absolutely need to make the case that for ones that doesn't
work because exactly as you say, the council tax income is not where they are assuming
it to be.
The other point about cutting service, I mean I think they will expect us to be making savings
and we need to again make the case that we are a well run low cost council and the scope
for making cost savings. It has to be a reasonable figure that we are trying to balance a budget.
They've pointed to reserves quite rightly and said, well, you know, some councils can
use reserves in the meantime, but as we've always said, reserve use buys time. It doesn't
solve long -term problems. So these are all the points that we'll be putting forward as
part of our lobbying and our consultation response.
Thank you, Councillor Graham for those questions. Clearly that is an area of keen interest to
all members, officers, residents. I know the Cabinet are also closely following what is
a quickly changing picture from what I understand from Ms. Mary and clearly there is work to
do on lobbying but I think if there is an opportunity for us as members to find out
It can be outside of this meeting.
I'm sure we can understand that as the position continues to change.
Are there any other questions on the fair funding formula?
If not, I think we will move through the rest of the paper.
Councillor Hedges, I think you were next.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mrs. Murray, for putting this paper together.
You just mentioned the reserves, so my question is about that.
How are you ensuring that reserves are used for the relative or the various initiatives
such as access for all and the cost of living, are not becoming permanent spending pressures?
Thank you.
Thank you, that's a very good question.
I mean, we've always worked on the basis that a defined pot of money will be used to introduce
initiatives on a time -limited basis.
And then beyond that, we are now looking, for instance, particularly relevant at the
is the work we're doing on the cost of living reserve,
where we are looking at the, I think there's 20 odd different initiatives that we funded
and are currently funding from that reserve.
And we're currently looking at what we do with them long term, and it will vary.
So a couple of things we've spoken about tonight, the LIFT platform, we absolutely want to do that.
And I've told my team they need to find the money from existing budgets to do that.
And, you know, they're committed to that.
Working with Systems Advice, they've had some additional funding,
as we've spoken about with financial inclusion and navigators, and we need to think about
what the offer is that we ask citizens' advice to deliver on our behalf as part of their
contract or a top -up to the contract. So we're currently doing that work and we'll bring
that forward in the next few months to make sure that we don't lose the good work that
we've done on the things that we really do think have worked, but we're realistic about
what we can do in the future.
I think that we have a lot of questions.
Just to note, Councillor Belton did have his hand up as well.
Not in my place, but just to note so that you have got him down and so that he knows.
You can put him in the queue.
My question was on paragraph nine on page 20.
I have two questions.
Paragraph nine notes that proposed to the 100 ,000 one -off budget this year to support
the development of corporate initiatives.
I was just wondering if someone could tell us a bit more about what this will be used for and
what improvements we can look for for our residents as part of that. It also includes a
further 750 ,000 for Elbok and it's been great to see the events and the engagement that's taken
part as part of Elbok this year. I'm looking forward to welcoming colleagues to South Ballin
this weekend for Country on the Common for those who've got their cowboy boots and huts ready.
But could you tell us a bit more about what the investment will be delivered as part of that further 750 ,000 please?
Thank you. Mrs. Murray, are you able to answer that or Miss Olsen, do you want to come in?
Thank you.
I'll leave for now for Ms. Mary to talk about ELBOC, if that's okay.
And I'll just talk about the 200 ,000 for the corporate priorities.
So the aim of this fund is to give us the ability to be able to bring in particularly
analytical and program management sport to really focus on some of the
priorities that we want to ensure that we're really focused on over the next
12 months. Some of those are things that you're hearing, you're all hearing
residents talk about. You're hearing them talk about them through the lens of
what I see through customer relations. I hear it, we hear about it on the
phones a lot. So some of this is about ensuring streets clean, some of this is
about some areas around housing and some of this is about how our residents feel
safe on streets but also how we ensure that we remain a very responsive Council
and we're listening to them. We know that there is a lot of data and analytical
work that we could be doing to really getting under the skin of some of these
problems. This isn't about sticky plasters over the top of
This is about using deep analytics and program management support to act.
We know that our offices are doing fabulous work in these areas and
this is about bringing in some additional capacity to support them when they've got really knotty problems.
Thank you.
And this is Marianne.
Additional funding for London Borough of Culture?
Yes, so I think it's fair to say as the program, and I'm not an expert on London Borough of Culture.
In fact, cancer aconella is, actually.
So maybe a bit more detail, if needed, could come from there.
But I think it's fair to say that as the program has
developed, the potential and the potential to create a legacy
has become more apparent.
And so what we're proposing here is
to use some of the funding that we've got.
Some of it will come from developer contributions.
Haven't got the final split of the figure on that yet,
but definitely making sure that the developer contributions are used for this,
but to really cement that legacy and to increase the arts and culture offer beyond the programme.
So in terms of delivery, it will be, you know, the whole year programme is going to be delivered
and this is a contribution towards that.
But because a lot of work is being done to make sure that the programme lasts beyond the one year,
that's effectively what the contribution here will be used to fund.
Do you want to comment on this point?
Yes, because it's just in relation to developer contributions because one of the points we
have made is that there have not been many planning applications coming in and future
developer contributions may therefore be low.
So in fact, these papers show that there was a significant contraction in planning income
because of a lack of planning applications.
We also know that building across London is practically at a standstill.
That may be one reason why we haven't seen the things that the administration promised
to pay for from developer contributions like law enforcement officers materialized despite
the repeated promises of a paper on that, this committee, but are we now starting to
factor in for future years the fact that the Section 106 money, the SIL contributions that
we would have expected to be there, are not going to exist because this collapse in applications
will leave a very long tail before we can start to pick up again.
I'll start as Elbok and end in developer contributions, but I'll allow it, Ms. Murray.
Thank you.
So just to clarify, in the context of London Borough of Culture, we're talking about neighborhood
sill, and that's a pot of money that we have already.
And we've been actively trying to make sure that we use that as best we can and put it
to good use.
So Elbok is specifically referencing neighborhood sill there.
In terms of future SIL or Section 106 contributions, we have, I think, already a prudent forecast on those in future years.
We know exactly what's in the pipeline and the kind of various stages that schemes are at that are in there.
And we, you know, as you say, it's clear that not all schemes that are in the pipeline will deliver or deliver in the timeframe that they're originally planned to.
So we will continue to be prudent and I think until we know what's going to happen with
future iterations of infrastructure levy. I'm comfortable that we're not overstating that at the moment.
Just for clarity, I wasn't suggesting we wouldn't be able to pay for things out of existing pots.
It's the fact that those pots are not going to be very large in the future that I'm concerned about.
Thank you. Okay, Councillor Belton and then I've got Councillor Corner, Apps and Critchard.
I can't for bare mentioning Councillor Graham's indulging in speculating about the future
in a way that I wouldn't have done, I don't think, and you never know what happens, you'd
be surprised how long Nine Elms stood empty.
But that's aside, I wanted to address the debt situation because I'm quite sure my good
friends sitting opposite will be putting a leaflet out almost as soon as the meeting
ends saying debt, external debt is up and we're in terrible trouble and all that sort
of thing.
There's the leader even acknowledging that the leaflet's waiting there to go.
It's printed.
It's printed.
And I just wanted to investigate that for a bit.
The figure here is an increase in the housing revenue account debt,
which is 40 million, but that's only this year, and it goes up and down, I'm sure.
Can I just take as an example on that?
This month in my ward, Randall Close is being handed over,
and there's 106 properties there,
and the current and growing rate,
that 106 properties, who knows if it was sold,
values got to be 50 million.
And they're from debt.
And somehow rather the capital asset side of this
is never counted.
Now I realise that you're looking at it
from a purely fiscal point of view,
But is there any way, and it would be a very difficult thing to do, all the expenditure
going for a moment on road maintenance, for instance, very difficult to say what exactly
the value of that is.
But somehow so that our friends here don't make complete idiots of themselves by pretending
that it doesn't produce anything.
Is there any way of quantifying the assets?
I'm not interested in debt where we're not actually getting assets, we're just spending
it.
That would be a silly thing to do.
But we can quantify the assets as a consequence, just so that we've got a counter to their
idiocy.
So I'll answer most of that question.
So we do have a financial model that proves that investing in new property is of financial value to the Council
and also in terms of service delivery and meeting our statutory requirements.
So I know that the building and the investment that we're doing is going to pay for itself, so to speak,
over the long term because we get the benefit of those units and we avoid, effectively we
avoid temporary accommodation costs by using those units to house people that would otherwise
have to go into temporary accommodation. And the overall financial benefit is there, plus
we also have on the balance sheet a capital asset as you say. We don't need to take into
account the value of the capital asset for that financial model to work over the length
of the debt that we are proposing.
My problem with that...
Councillor Belton, if you want to...
My problem with that, if I may, Mrs Merritt,
is that you may know it and I may know it.
Some people apparently choose to ignore it
and it's quite difficult to prove to the public.
So if they're given misinformation,
you know, the debt's gone up...
Well, in fact, to be fair to them,
It's not actually misinformation, it's actually accurate, but there is nothing to prove the other side.
And that's the problem which we face, and I would have thought it's in your interest if we can think of some way of representing this, so that it is not ceases to be a problem.
Mrs. Merritt, yes, Councillor Beltin.
I mean, I could suggest a leaflet, if that's...
Can you provide us the figures to put in that leaflet?
Every one pound of investment in the housing department provides 10 pounds of capital asset.
Can you provide that figure?
Mrs. Merritt?
I have the financial figures so yes of course I can.
Thank you very much.
I think there's Councillor Graham and Councillor Richards -Jones you want to respond and I think
Councillor Aps also indicated she wants to come in on debt and borrowing.
I will allow some quick responses, but I am conscious we are only on the second item of
the substantive agenda.
So some quick points and response and then I'll come to Councillor Aps for a question.
I will be quick and I'm grateful for that.
Councillor Belton just said that our position is we don't think debt leads to anything.
It's quite the opposite.
We think that debt leads to a lot of interest payments.
In fact, so many interest payments that they will be higher than the amount this administration
plans to borrow and the administration is so confident in its arguments
even with its own members that we saw the site before the committee of the
Labour whip rifling through her colleagues pigeonholes to remove the
figures so they didn't find out. Thank you Councillor Richard Jones did you
want to add anything further? Thank you I want to put Councillor Belton's question
to Miss Mary but in a different way because Councillor Belton is right that
But for whatever strange reason, the Council won't publish any of the information.
The Council keeps asserting that the plans are affordable, that the business case is
robust, but it won't publish any of that.
The debt figures, which Councillor Apps was keen to conceal from her colleagues, were
obtained by us only because we eventually extracted them from the cabinet member in
committee after meetings of meetings of meetings of asking for these figures.
These figures are still not in the council papers.
The more ambitious and detailed figures that Councilor Belton wants are nowhere to be seen in tonight's pack.
So my question is, it's probably a fairer one to Councilor Ireland than it is to Ms. Merrie.
I think Ms. Merrie's done as far as she can.
Why won't the council publish this information?
We published all the information we think is necessary.
for our, for councillors and members of the public to be confident that our plans are
affordable. Now, we've held focus groups where we've spoken to residents who are keen to
have more information and that's a project that we will be working on. Now, you can laugh
all you like. You put out leaflets that claim that we inherited no debt. We, we repaid the
last instalment of the debt you took out in 2012, what was that? A quarter of a billion
pounds or something? So, you know, there you go.
That isn't accurate, it was debt you voted for.
At least we're not publishing lies.
I allowed a short debate. Councillor App's on.
Thank you very much. Unfortunately, when one of the councillors put party political leaflets
into our mailboxes they didn't notice the no junk mail sign which is a pity.
On external borrowing I really want to dig into where we are with external
borrowing. On the end of year of this last financial year does the council have
any external debt and secondly I understand long time before I was on the
I understand the council took out 224 million in 2012, as I say well before my time.
But has that debt now been paid off or do we still owe some of that debt from 2012?
And as I say, that was 224 million at that time.
Yes, so thank you. So the 224 million in 2012 was the HRA subsidy buyout, so that was the
government's response to self -financing, and we made the last payment at the end of last
year, so you're correct that the external borrowing of the council is now zero.
Councillor Corner. Yes, thank you, Chair. I've got a question
on the General Fund Revenue page 19, table 2. It shows the Treasury investments income
budget was 21 .5 million, actuals 22 .5 million. That's approximately a 5 % change and obviously
it is a favorable one, favorable variance.
So that does make, contribute towards
the net general fund expenditure
of just over a million pounds.
But if it was an adverse variance,
then it would actually wipe out the net expenditure
and we'd be barely breaking even.
What can the council do to reduce volatility
if we feel that that volatility is too high
or that level of risk is too high.
And what is the trend over time going back previous years?
It's not contained in the paper, but is that 5 % delta something
that's usual, or has it been larger or smaller
in previous years typically?
Yes.
OK, thank you.
Good question.
So the treasury income that we've received
has increased over the past few years. As I said, it's directly linked to bank rates.
It isn't necessarily investments in banks, but the bank rate drives the majority of that
return. And we've tried as hard as we can to budget as accurately as possible for that,
but a number of things have happened over the past few years where we just haven't been
able to accurately predict when we set the budget at the start of the year what would
happened during the year.
So we have had variances larger than that.
But as you say, variance can go both ways.
But since 2021, I think, we've only had additional income.
I'm going to say positive.
Favorable.
Favorable.
Good word.
Year -end positions, variances.
So we've got projections that take into account
the Bank of England base rate and the projections on that.
We've had some stability on base rates.
It usually links to when we assume base rates will change.
They're on the downward trajectory, hopefully.
But if that changes, then obviously that
will then create a favorable variance.
We've locked in quite a number of deals
that are favorable in the current financial year.
So we're still benefiting from high rate investments,
even though bank rates have gone down.
And I think we achieved 5 .06 % 24 .5,
which is, as the current bank rate is 4 .25,
you know, is pretty significant.
We've flagged for a number of years
that this is all very, very helpful and good news,
and it helps to, as you say, offset the service pressures, but we don't expect that to continue,
not least because as cash balances do go down, and they will go down, not least because we're
avoiding external borrowing and we're using our cash instead. Those balances will go down
and we do expect the bank rate to go down and we've factored that into our budget and
our projections going forward as best we can.
Thank you, Mr Murray. Councillor Critchard, last question for you.
Okay, thanks. First of all, a slight follow -on from the picture on the debt. You had that
lovely graph you showed us last time that we're all very interested in. That might be
something that we might like to see again and see how that's reflected. But what I'm
thinking about is this, is we know that the fairer funding review, and it is a fairer
funding review, potentially could be difficult for whoever happens to be running the Council
council in three to four years' time. That's something I think we all should acknowledge
as local councillors here, regardless of our political party.
What of course the other side of the equation is, as with all budgets, we've got money
coming in and money coming out. I just wondered if we thought about some of the demand management
things, some of the changes that we could make. Of course, we're looking at three
years ahead as well that would make a difference to our outgoings. I mean for
example I was thinking we've got a massive pressure on the SEND budget but
we have we are just we should be opening up Broadwater schools so we can take
more children in locally. Are there any initiatives we're doing and also any
other initiatives coming through from the government that would affect our
outgoings so for example on homelessness and temporary accommodation or anything
like that. And I think it's fair we should think about both sides of the
picture because when we know more we can obviously discuss this more in more
detail at this committee.
So just very briefly, so we've been looking at demand management as a priority for a number of years.
We've got a particularly in adult social care there's a transforming social care
transformation program that is based on a strengths -based approach, so making
sure that we recognize the strengths of the individual, their
household, their family and their community, but also building in digital
technology. That's a really big area for managing demand in adult social care and
that we've got lots of work going on in that area. We're also looking a bit more
across the piece. So recognizing that often a family that's known to us through children's
social care can often be known to us through our adult social care and often through our
housing list as well. So trying to take that, again, that holistic approach across the piece
to see whether there's anything we can do to bring together our efforts to help support
families in a way that will manage demand better. So there's some really good work I think about to
kick off on that. In terms of what the government is doing they've definitely committed to reviewing
SCN provision and they're going to consult on that in the autumn. The adult social care reforms have
to some extent paused but I know that they're working on that as well. Temporary accommodation
is difficult, housing in London is incredibly difficult and I think that's the area that
we are going to continue to see, you know, just difficulties in supply and demand effectively.
And there's little that the council can do itself. It's building new homes, you know,
we're purchasing properties, we're trying to prevent. So actually having looked at the
current year initial forecast, you know, we're predicting an overspend on homelessness prevention.
and that's a good thing in my view.
If we can spend more on our homeless intervention,
then, you know, longer term that's better for everyone.
So I think homelessness is going to be the area
that we're going to be seeing some kind of sticky figures on
and we really are going to have to work hard on that.
Thank you, Ms. Murray, for that answer.
And clearly, I think when we see the next medium -term financial strategy,
I think demand management will no doubt be something
that come up a lot in that.
And it may be that we as a committee want to look more into that in the future
and our work in that area.
So this report, thank you very much for your questions
and contributions.
This report is for information.
And I'm going to ask you to note the report.
Yeah, there are two recommendations
at paragraph one, Councilor Graham.
I think this is certainly not your fault.
But we are in the process of a rather significant change
to the way that OSCs have gone about things
and taken reports.
This is reframed as a recommendation.
And the previous report, which is also information,
was not framed as a recommendation.
It just stated it was for information.
Here we have what could be taken as a multi -part vote.
And we don't want to spend our time
voting against saying something as information,
but nor do we wish to be seen to necessarily have
been in support of things where we might want
to take a different position.
I don't think the wording of these recommendations in the new context is helpful.
And so while we will, for the benefit of keeping things going, accept it for information, can
I request that the wording is looked into and standardized and made more helpful?
I can understand that, Councillor Graham.
When I saw paragraph one, I did think it was slightly confusing to recommend, to note and
to note further proposals, including budget variations, which I appreciate different political
parties might not be willing to accept.
So I think we are just noting this report for information.
Those recommendations, well, that paragraph stands in the report, but we're just noting
the report for information.
And if you wish to put on record anything, then I'm happy for you to put that to me.
What I would say, although I don't think the language is unhelpful, it is helpful to highlight
those two aspects in that way.
So we need to find a way of bringing those out rather than just saying the whole things for information. Don't worry
But without it putting us on the hook
Noted I think we live and learn yeah
we'll move on then to the next item on the agenda, which is the
Change program updates. So as I understand in December

5 Change Programme Update (Paper No. 25-238)

2024
Miss Olson attended a committee and gave a progress update on the change program
I think it was agreed then that members wanted a further update particularly on benefits delivered by the change program
So I think this report really is designed to be an update on that benefits piece of work
So miss Alton, I'll hand over to you to introduce the report. Thank you
Thank you
And in the context of time
I will assume that everyone has read the report and has seen the fantastic work that the team have done around
defining the benefits
but on the grounds I'm likely to get some questions on current status of the
program I thought it was worth a little bit of time on a couple of points there.
So current status of the change program is that we're now sort of almost two
years into the delivery stage of the program. We're approximately halfway
through the spend in terms of actual spend. The totality of the budget has
been allocated out but obviously it takes time for programs to actually
deliver and to start to spend. It's currently funding 35 projects.
Interesting stat for you that the average spend on a project is 49k. It is
a series of smaller projects that come together that build up towards the four
portfolios and it is currently funding 28 offices across the organization in a
a real variety of roles.
And before I'm inevitably asked the question
of what happens when these roles come to an end
from a funding perspective,
the expectation is that they become part
of our budgetary conversations.
And so if I think of my own area
where I've got some analysts in there
and I've got some in particular HROD functions in there
that we've not previously had,
as we're going through our restructures
and using the DMA to redesign some of our structures,
I'm looking at ensuring that those roles,
I don't recruit backfill to roles
where people have retired or people have left,
and instead I'm using that headcount for those roles.
So we are very clear that at the end of the change program,
the message is that if you want to keep the roles,
we need to find it within existing base budgets.
This is not about increasing the base budgets.
Which brings me to, please remember that when you set up this program at the outset,
a huge amount of the focus was about building capability, and it is a major benefit of the change program.
It was about bringing new skills in, it was about looking at things through slightly different ways,
and working along offices in each and every directorate to build the capabilities inside the individual directorates
to deliver improvement projects.
We've also been keeping an eye on the future and maturing our governance, because really
now we need to be start establishing this as business as usual and not as a separate
change program, because it's not about the management now of new funding coming in, it's
about what we've learned and how we work moving forward.
So some of the legacies of the program is that from a people perspective, and let's
not forget our ability to deliver for all our residents is massively impacted
by particularly our frontline staff. We now have a people in capability board
that meets regularly, it's looking at the totality of our establishment figures,
it's looking at our EDI, it's looking at the future skills that we need. We've got
a data and digital board that's about prioritizing the new innovations as they
come through the organization. We've got a customer services strategy board
that's looking about how we're delivering for residents,
and we've got a place and growth board
that's been all about the establishment
of that place function.
The additional rigor that we've had in our approach
over particularly the last six to 12 months
has absolutely been about benefits.
So a lot of the benefits of the program
are some of the more intangible.
I was talking the other day about how in the public sector do we value a data lake?
Because for any of you who have worked or currently work in a commercial
organization you put a pound note and it's quite a high value on your
data lake because your data is a massive asset to you as an organization. We don't
passionately quantify it in the public sector and I'm not suggesting that we do
but our ability for the analysts to be able to ensure we've got a clean data
then means if you think of the conversation we had at the beginning of
this where we were talking about finances ability to really target those
residents most at need how do they use that they use AI they're using
technology but it all has to point back to a data lake doesn't say so there
isn't a cashable benefit of a data lake of course there isn't there's not a
cashable benefit to the fact that our staff engagement
scores show us that we
now have much more engaged staff and there's not a cashable benefit to the fact that our average recruitment time
Has moved down to eight weeks. These are not cashable benefits, but they are what you set up as benefits at the outset
That said we have been through a very rigorous process of identifying
identifying where each pound has been spent and where cashable benefits can be attributed
to the program, which you have then got in the paper.
It is an art, not a science benefits realization.
Anyone who's done any work on it.
The last review I did in the NHS, they had a team of hundreds of people looking at benefits
realization.
You soon get to the stage of realizing you're spending more money on trying to track the
benefits than the benefits. So there's definitely a proportionality piece that we must ensure
that we do. Moving forward, the next phase of anything that we do will need to be aligned
to the MTFS. Of course it will be. But what we've done with the change program, or I should
say what you have done and what all the brilliant officers who've done the work on has done
though, is start the foundation for us organizationally to be able to do that for the next stage.
There are cashable savings there that are now annual cashable savings.
There's some non -cashables in there as well around things like the launch of co -pilot,
which the sector is now saying is delivering an average of 10 hours saving per person per
month.
But we've also got coming through a whole wave of new mainly AI digital programs, which
do give us a trajectory more to the targets that you originally set up as the programme.
The first five of those business cases started to hit my inbox this last week and we're expecting
to be using those as we go through to the next Budget Round at the back end of this
year.
Thank you very much for that update. Any questions? Councillor Cornerley?
Brilliant, thank you Chair and thank you Ms Alston for your presentation and for the long -awaited
kind of site of the benefits that I know this committee has been asking for for a long time
and it's really great to see it.
On page 47, paragraph 20, there are the three projects that you alluded to in your report
there – digital blueprint, leisure strategy and assets – and I know that the business
cases are ongoing. What is the approximate date of delivery for those
and is there like a framework we have to prevent or to guard against
rather sunk costs in the delivery of those projects? I think it's particularly
important to understand given that they could, well from the
descriptions it seems that they could substantially impact either way the
overall benefit of the programme?
So the first five business cases, as I say, hit me this week.
I expect to see the next nine of this phase of work that we're doing over the next couple
of weeks.
We then need to go through an exercise, though, of prioritising when we choose to do them
and our capacity to be able to deliver them.
So as I said to a colleague this evening, just because we can see now a series of 12
to 14 business cases where we can see good strong return on investment that does include
the sunk cost at the outset, so that's absolutely in the business case, it doesn't mean we've
got the capacity to do them all at once.
So we've got to think about what a realistic delivery time frame is and that will be the
next part of that implementation work. Thank you. Okay I've got Councillor Lee,
then Hedges, Belton, Fraser and Apps. Thank you. Yeah thank you so much for the paper
and I want to also congratulate the team on all the work that's gone into this and
as Matthew said it's great to finally see the the positives coming coming
through and I think I just wanted to sort of draw attention to the fact that
the object the whole objective of the program was to enable the delivery of
excellent services for our residents so even for example where we are having
fewer vacancies that obviously translates for our residents as more
consistent support and I appreciate what you said that it's difficult to quantify
a lot of the how this is benefiting our residents and that a lot of it is not
cashable but I wanted to ask are we able to measure at all how the impact for our
residents or even on a more sort of human level or qualitative level? So some
of the programs that we're already delivering it's easier to see so if you
look at the GovTech one in one sense what that's doing is about how we
process council tax. What's that ensuring though is the backlogs that we
previously had for more complicated cases. Officers are now able to get too
quicker which then means from a resident perspective what residents are saying is
that they are not stuck and waiting for us
and creating what I'd call failure demand as well
because the more somebody is waiting for us
to respond to something, the more they keep contacting us
naturally to see where they're up to in the process.
So some of the KPIs that we're starting to see
is some of it's about the reduction
in the amount of telephony we're receiving in some spaces.
And that's because we're processing whether or not
It's council tax, parking, so much quicker for people.
There's not the need for that failure demand.
Our ability to answer the phone quickly
across the whole organization has,
as we've moved everyone onto NetCall
and had a real focus on that,
we've seen substantial improvements there.
So again, from a resident, that responsive council,
our ability to meet their needs
and meet them where they're at is really important.
Social care front door is predominantly actually about professional referrals that come in,
but obviously if professional referrals are being dealt with through adult social care quicker,
you will then start to see that from a resident perspective.
The next phase that we move to, Fionella's already started to touch on some of the adult social care work,
you know, how we're using things like Alexa, how we're using things like track pads,
to really start to support our more vulnerable, our elderly residents in that prevention space will be really important.
Thank you. Councillor Hedges?
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mrs. Olsen for all your hard work.
I think my first question about value for money and return on investment has pretty much been answered,
but thinking about it from a resident and taxpayer perspective and obviously money from the reserves,
it would be good to understand or see more updates on how
residents can see a return on their investment basically.
And then my second point was, you talked about
staffing that you've taken on board.
Essentially, you'll keep them on board after,
at the end of the change program.
With the use of co -pilot as well,
because you mentioned that,
which I've also used in my work life as well.
Do you think you're gonna see a lot more efficiencies
gained and will you, and potentially some trimming down
of the staffing?
Thank you.
So I think in any organization when you're looking at this
you have to almost try and put yourself in 10 years time
and not in a one year or a three year basis.
So in 10 years time do I see our staff makeup looking really different?
Yes I do because I think in 10 years time we will have a smaller number of
people who are answering the phone but they will be need to be a really highly
skilled very empathetic high emotional intelligence group of staff are real
specialists because the people that we're talking to on the phone and the
we're seeing face -to -face will have some real complexities that's the reason why
they've not self -served because actually you're already starting to see now that
most residents would like to be self -serve. So do I see in 10 years time?
Yes. Do I see that as being quite a journey for us? Yes I do absolutely along
the way. I think any organization will say that they see themselves in that
five to 10 years period as being an organization
with a smaller number of staff,
probably a higher number of staff in an IT team
and in a data team, probably a smaller number of staff
doing things like answering phones.
So I think the skill set will change dramatically,
but if you also look at the profile of our staff
and how many people you would naturally expect
to start to see to retire in that five to ten year period as well.
You can see that actually organizationally this should be a natural evolution that we
go on.
Thank you, Councillor Hedges and Mrs. Olsen.
Councillor Belton?
Thank you.
Those latter comments make one feel that after all an organization that is about the welfare
and health of society, we ought to get you thinking about what society is going to look
like and what we all do in a few years' time, but perhaps not for tonight.
I need a pint or two before I can tackle that one.
I'm still intrigued by all sorts of elements of this.
But a lot of it is to do with, well, a lot of the benefits, the council tax, one you've
has mentioned is to do with current processes being done
more efficiently.
Perhaps it's more than more efficiently.
They seem to be processes that are common to Richmond
as well as Wandsworth.
Is Richmond totally involved in this?
And do you get, is the same paper effectively
put towards Richmond?
And what do they think about it all?
So I'd say about maybe 50, 60 % of it, yes.
So some of it absolutely is the same as you'd expect, the starters, movers and levers.
That is obviously the same.
But once you start to look at areas like restructures, some of the commissioning and procurement,
some of the asset work, actually it's quite different.
So Wandsworth has a very heavy focus
on the being a listening council,
being responsive to residents.
So that looks very different for them, for you here.
Whereas for Richmond, they've done a lot more work
in the asset strategy and residence side.
So ultimately the different pillars and my four portfolios are the same,
but within there it's very much tailored to the individual needs of the two different councils.
So you happen to pick on one, I just mentioned the one that you picked on,
where the saving on page 47 is £16 ,000.
Is that the Wandsworth saving or?
Yes, so the numbers here are your savings, there's none of the Richmond savings in here, these are just yours.
Okay, thank you Ms. Stilton for that clarification.
Councillor Fraser.
Thank you, I'm going to reel off two questions quite quickly.
So one, we've touched on the workforce.
Could you, do you have any feedback on what the changes have meant for members of staff
and any feedback you might have had during the process?
And secondly, just thinking about the next stages on measuring outcomes, how will we
be set clear objectives for the programme to ensure that we are making that progress
and how can we report that back here?
Thanks.
So I'll take the reporting back here one first if that's okay.
So as per as the program was set up every six months
I come back to the committee to give an update on progress on where the program's at. I think there will be more of a
conversation knowing aligned to MTFS in the next budget process
that will happen at the back end of this year though
where we're trying to
Andrew Travers's new chief exec very keen to ensure that we bring these things together
Specifically on feedback from workforce depends a huge amount on where a workforce is at at that point in time.
So if I think of some of the conversations that I've had with social workers about some of the introductions of things like co -pilot and magic minutes
and they're really enthusiastic and excited about the impact it's having for them because it gives them an ability to engage with families in a different way.
to be able to write a simple letter to a child
that a child can read,
that it's really transformative for them.
And if you're talking to them specifically
about that change, that is very exciting.
However, when teams are going through restructure processes
and we're looking at de -layering through the DMA,
they're in a really different change process
at that point in time.
And you can map it through the staff survey results,
because actually uncertainty about structures
and what teams looks like, that feels very different.
What I think we should all be incredibly proud of though,
is despite the fact that two large teams
had just been three restructures,
when we went through the last staff survey,
the fact that we're starting to see that upturn
in staff engagement and staff morale,
I think is really positive.
And it bucks the trend for public sector
organizations as well.
I think there was a second part to the question around looking ahead and how we measure and
monitor impact.
I think was that right?
So sorry I thought I answered that with the I'll be back in six months but I expect to
see a lot of it through aligned with the MTFS.
Yes thank you sorry about that.
Councillor Apps.
Thank you very much.
I actually went to some really interesting training today from the Environment Agency
And it really made me think about what you were saying about the rigor of looking at
objectives and how you measure things which are fairly intangible.
Because one of the things that they talked about is the fact that the costs of flooding,
for example, this is obviously not related to change program, but are routinely underestimated.
So for example, there was a school in another area where they had calculated that the school
would be closed for a week if it was flooded.
the actual outcome was it was actually unavailable for a year and it cost 8 million pounds.
So I wonder how much we can look at things like the risks and the costs as part of that rigor.
Thinking about what are the possible downsides of not investing and
how accurate can we be about actually looking at those and
trying to measure them based on past examples or current learning.
And then the second part of my question would be, what have we learned?
That would be my reflections from my training today, but what have we learned from this process?
What have we learned about the council's ability to measure and deliver change?
Great questions, and I love looking at the environment agency.
I mean, the way they use sensors and AI is very exciting, but I won't be distracted at your meeting for that.
One of the things that I would look at and say that we've learnt is that to date we haven't been brave enough to try things quickly enough.
Because we haven't failed, when I look at any program that hasn't had 20 to 40 % of its projects fail in the first month,
for me that means we're not being brave enough and we're not being risky enough.
So we've had a very, very low failure rate.
Now you could argue that is really good and positive,
or I would say we're just not trialing things quickly enough
and being quite agile enough yet.
What we've learned is we've got a staff officer group
who are really hugely enthusiastic about this.
They've got a passion for it,
but they're also incredibly busy doing the day job.
And if you look at the evidence
across public sector organizations,
you can see that trying to manage your front door and your resident impact at
the same time of doing transformation is too much to ask of anybody. So I think
how we structure ourselves in terms of thinking wholesale next stage we really
need to take that on board because we've got fabulous staff who are very excited
about it but you can't ask them to do the two things hand in hand. I would also
say that we have learned the value and importance of data and you know there
was a lot of data work already going on but how we use that data in the
intangibleness of it and you can see a lot of work has happened around the
impact of bringing in more program management skills and I think the next
stage of it is how we really think human centered design how we're thinking
service planning, how we're putting the resident in the heart of our design work
when we're bringing new projects on board. So that's not user testing it with
all of us around this table, it's not user testing it with officers, it's
actually putting residents in the heart of our user testing and thinking about
how we move forward with it. So there's a capacity piece there and there's a
being prepared to be a bit riskier I would say as well and that fantastic
staff who are really excited about it and we need to harness that and make
sure we move forward with it. Final question to Councillor Critchard.
Thank you I was just going to say the whole business of being very agile I
think it's on the way in because it was a traffic jam I was listening to far
more radio than I would normally and Michael Lewis has got a new book out
which is actually looking at US government.
And one of the things that he commented, I'm pretty sure he commented,
is how difficult it is for public sector to change,
partly because of the way public servants have to respond to members
and how elected representatives
and how elected representatives respond about money
that might be perceived to be wasted,
which is quite interesting in terms of projects failing.
and maybe that's something we as a group need to look at,
is putting something there and saying,
right, that's for you to try things out.
Some will work, some won't, but that's the nature of it.
My specific question, though, was about the customer access
strategy, which is mentioned on paragraph 12.
And I think probably in the KPIs,
there's a mention of the six -month trial
for the three -tiered customer support model.
So I was quite interested to know what that was.
And I think I'd probably be saying that I suspect members would like to have some input
into the customer access strategy.
So knowing when that would be available and when you could do with looking at it would be great.
So a three -tier model of customer access is about saying your first tier of general questions,
queries that come into any organization, your main aim should be to automate them.
But you effectively, if you think of it as a funnel, you can't start to automate your
main customer queries really until you know what your main customer queries are.
So your first task is to try and pull them all together because once you're
getting them all in one place you can then start to work through them and
start to automate them effectively. And we hear and see from residents that
actually we've almost failed them for many of them the fact that they have to
pick up the phone to us they would rather be self -serving. So the first bit
of this trial has been about pulling together as many of our many, many
telephone, different telephone numbers into one place so that we can then start
to automate the responses and make things easier for residents. So one of
the examples in the pilot that we've been running that you mentioned has been
we've realized just how many phone calls we were getting that were about repairs
but when you look at our website the first thing it tells you, it did tell you
to do, not now, was to phone us.
If you wanted to self -serve, you had
to scroll down to the second page of the website
because the Log It Online had been.
And it's a natural way of a service
to develop because when the website was first developed,
we wanted people to phone us.
And then we wanted people to email us.
So basically, as the services have been developed,
they've been added onto the website.
And of course, that now means we look at them as a screen
and they're at the bottom.
So we saw an immediate 5 % reduction in the number of people calling us on repairs just
by putting it at the top of the page.
So that's that first tier of bring all your customer queries together and you can start
to automate.
The second tier is then your first bit of actual talking to a human being is what happens
at tier two.
but it should be a generalist.
And it should be a generalist who can answer a question
on housing, who can answer a question on social care,
whether it's adults or children.
This is not complex casework.
This is how do I, I'm stuck with this,
I need to repay this, can I create?
And we need to ensure that we've got
the right back office support and technology
in systems in place so that our customer services
experienced staff can be able to deliver that.
So that it's only when they can't that then you
get to the bottom of my funnel, which
is a smaller number of people who
are my absolute specialists, who really work in the,
you know, they are the highly skilled people, who
are the planners, who are the housing specialists, who
are the social workers, who are incredibly valuable.
We're using them at the point that they're really needed and they've got the capacity to do it
So that's my three tier. We would expect to start to see that
First phase of the customer access strategy come together towards the back end of this year and absolutely very much would welcome
Your input into it
And I just wanted to touch quickly on the I think as a future program thinking about how we move to
Agile, test, learn, fail, test, learn, fail is really important.
The key to it though is in ensuring that you make the time at the beginning,
which comes back to, I've forgotten who asked me the question,
sorry about clarity of objectives and benefits.
When you start a program, the importance of spending planning time on
what's the problem you're trying to solve.
No one's ever trying to solve a problem to which the answer is an app. The app is
never an answer. What's the actual problem you're trying to solve? And
that's then how you ensure when you're testing learning, testing learning, that
you're staying true and you're learning all the time. But there is a value to
learning and there's a cost associated to learning. Thank you very much. A nice
place to end on learning. So thank you very much, Ms. Olsen, for the update. I think,
as you said, look forward to a further update because clearly the work of the program and
how it's evolving and further alignment with the challenges presented by the medium -term
financial strategy will be really important. So I think we are noting this report again
is for information. And we'll now move on to item six, the annual equalities report.
So this is an annual report on actions taken by the council in the last financial year

6 Annual Equalities Report (Paper No. 25-239)

To celebrate one's worth diverse communities and create a fairer borough and think mr. Fisher you're presenting the report
So I'll hand over to you. Thank you. Great. Thank you much councillors. Jamie Fisher head of policy and strategy
So as councillor stocker said this is a report that we bring every year to celebrate the work that the council has done in the preceding
year
to celebrate the
Diversity of bonds with population and reduce inequality in the borough
So there's lots of great examples in the impact report which hopefully you've had a chance
to read.
I'll just pick out a couple now for you.
The Brighter Living Fair that we held for older residents which included 160 events
organized by local groups and charities to help promote safe and independent activities
for older people.
In June 2024 we were proud to be recognized as a borough sanctuary for the work that we've
done with our refugees and asylum seekers.
and then we have a really extensive Black History Month 365 program which
included lots of great events including Point Blank's Windrush Ballet, a Roots
and Culture market which promoted local black owned businesses and various
events throughout our libraries. We also were recognized for our commitment to
adopting the social economic duty which sort of shortlisted for the Public
Sector Organization of the Year award and the UK social mobility awards and
And we've got lots of events to mark pride including participating in the London pride March, which we will of course be doing again this weekend
So yes, I'd be happy to answer any questions counselors have on the report, thank you
counselor Graham
Yes, so I mean there are various projects
Listed and on page 68 where we've got the South Asian Heritage Month cultural projects
The fifth event that we appear to have funded was decolonized choir presented an evening
of collective singing at Tara Theatre.
Now when I Googled this to see what that might have been, I found the advert which said it
was to encourage local residents to experience the resistance, which did lead me to question
what it was a resistance to.
So I went online and found that the organization has a manifesto.
Its opening is, our collective is made up of activist and militant community organizers.
It does say militant.
They say they are uncompromising and strong and will dismantle the white supremacy.
No white tears.
We are truly putting the threat back.
It then appears that the way in which they chose to put the threat back on that evening
was to encourage our residents to sing From the River to the Sea.
Now whatever else one might say about that, and I can say several things, the last time
I checked, Israel is not in South Asia and has nothing to do with South Asian heritage,
And songs like that from self -professed militants are an utterly inappropriate use of our money.
And I would like to know how and why we ended up funding that evening.
Mr Evans, are you able to...
Yeah, I mean I don't know the answer, so we'll have to come back to the committee with some more information.
So thank you.
Okay, I've got Councillor corner then Council hedges Belton Fraser and up.
Thank you, sir.
And thank you, Mr. Fisher for for your presentation that I know that everyone on this committee
will have a genuine interest in solving and addressing, you know, sometimes really quite
deep rooted inequalities in the borough.
And there are some initiatives in here that will undoubtedly do that.
The problem with this report is that we have no idea as a committee how effective this
strategy has been over the past year or so.
So my question is, and I think really it's a question for the cabinet member, not the
officers who have done their best to deliver this.
What metrics can we put in place, what measures will we put in place to track the improvement of inequalities over time in the borough,
so that we know that all of these activities are actually going to do the work of addressing inequalities.
I think it's a great shame that there's nothing in this report to actually demonstrate that equalities have actually been addressed.
So I'd like an answer from the administration to that.
That's a lovely question, Councillor Corner.
I'm actually going to pass it over to John, because it's something that we have been discussing.
I mean, it's a very good question.
And I think with all of these things, we are trying to create a program which is wide -reaching
and accessible to those in the borough.
Anything we fund, we do usually require sort of impact and outcome and output sort of data
on there.
So I think what we can do is commit to, when we bring this report to a future committee,
that we do expand out the information there to give the committee a sense of its reach
and impact.
So if you can sort of bear with us, I think we can improve that as we move forward.
If I may, I think it is also worth noting that a lot of these programs are designed
to support other administration priorities, such as our support for local businesses.
They just have an aspect that touches on equality.
So it's not that we're doing work solely focused on equality, but we're just building it into our wider program. So lots of co -benefits
Integrated approach makes sense. I
Do think there is potential for this council to do some really impressive and groundbreaking work to address inequalities given the resources at our
Disposal so I would really encourage
Officers to to take that forward ideally led by the administration, but I'm pleased but with your reassurance there mr.
and so thanks for that. And perhaps it's also an opportunity for this committee to show some leadership as well,
but through these new tasks and finish groups to look at how we can better have an understanding of inequalities and how they're being addressed
or not addressed as the case may be.
Thank you, Councillor Gornet. I think that's definitely something that we can pick up and certainly just touching on the next paper on the agenda,
clearly we have an opportunity in the KPIs in conversation with officers to think about if there's any KPIs in particular that this committee
would be particularly interested in as opposed to those KPIs that go to the cabinet and administration
if there are other issues.
So that is something that we can work with Office to identify if you think there is impact
that you'd like to track through the KPIs.
So Councillor Hedges?
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Fisher, for putting the paper together.
Really appreciate all the work.
I'm a strong advocate for diversity and equity and inclusion, so thank you.
My question is more around the special responsibility roles.
So we had previously two champions, I believe, that would be involved in this.
The refugees champion and then the equalities champion.
But now those two roles have been abolished and I'm sensing it would be the -
Yeah, three.
Correct.
I'm sensing that now the new deputy cabinet member role would be the community's role that would be,
which is also gets an extra 9 ,000, I believe, a year from taxpayers' money.
I just wanted to know, one, have the previous champions been involved in this work and how much?
And also the deputy chair, sorry, the deputy cabinet member role,
What is that going to be included in your work going forward?
Thank you.
So, our qualities champion was Councillor and former Mayor, Sana Jafri.
She did a brilliant job and she's the person that actually put South Asian History Month
on the map and that's what she's contributed to the Council.
We never celebrated that before.
just headline points here,
Councillor Samila Varatharaj
has obviously been working very hard
with refugees and sanctuary seekers,
so we managed to actually become a borough of sanctuary.
A lot of that is due to her work.
She will continue to champion sanctuary seekers
alongside additional duties.
But she's done a fantastic job.
I'm really proud of all the work
that both of them have done over the past couple of years.
Councillor Salmilla, Bharat Raj is the Deputy Cabinet Member, now taking on a bigger role.
Councillor Belton.
I've got a little few of the concerns of colleagues here and I think Councillor Cornyn's point about a task finish.
should have no idea what that is.
But it does seem to me that that would be an interesting case
in terms of this paper in some ways.
Some of it, I think, perhaps it's the administration's fault.
Perhaps it's the officer administration's fault,
if you see what I mean.
The equalities paper traditionally,
when it used to report to the establishments committee,
say, that's going back a bit.
would have things like the proportion of senior officers from ex -communities
and diversity and the number of disabled employees at a senior level.
That kind of statistical information is, of course, not only fairly easy to collect,
but it's comparable year on year and can show trends.
And I think it's a slight shame if we're losing this, that in here, because it certainly doesn't cover that sort of thing.
Personally I'm not, I think the record on equality and inclusion is, sorry, on diversity and inclusion is pretty good.
I'm also interested though in equalities, and I bore my colleagues with this on a few occasions,
I think the most important inequality is money.
And we do actually know through the enumeration districts,
I'm sure Mr. Evans can rehearse from the top of his head
how somewhere focused more or less where I live
is the most indebted place in the world
because everyone's got mortgages they can't afford,
but they can afford them.
So they're all incredibly rich, actually.
But we've got those figures and we've got the figures of where the poorest places are
in the borough.
We don't have any comparisons between whether that poverty gap or that affluence gap has
got bigger in the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 5 minutes or not.
And I'd certainly be interested in that because I personally think that's the most important
of all and it of course crosses the boundaries of all these other issues like I'm sure it
is much more difficult to be a poor disabled person than a poor able one.
All these kind of difficulties but it does seem to me there's something we could measure
or quantify or address if we had the data there.
Thank you I can see a number of officers want to come in and perhaps your only answer you
can clarify the other reporting mechanisms that the council provide in
terms of equality such as I think we have to report on our public sector
equality duty somewhere perhaps you could just clarify that to members our
other work and the reporting yeah absolutely so council Belton makes a
very valid point this report in front of us is really focused on our work in
terms of community and promoting community equality and promoting
conclusion. The council, does the council's report regular information to
our joint staffing committee and those papers are public, I think they're
annually aren't they? So annual reports with all the information, Council Belton
you've described or asked for there, that continues to be reported so
and members from, lead members from both councils as our staffing overall
employee body see them and scrutinize those figures there.
And then if I may pick up on the point about economic fairness, I think absolutely that
we recognize that and that's something the administration has driven us to do more on
over the past few years.
We saw it with the adoption of the socioeconomic duty.
That was something the council chose to do early in 2022.
The national labor government is now proposing to introduce it as a mandatory duty, but the
council adopted it ahead of the game on that.
And it's been part of our work and it's been part of our equality impact needs assessments
ever since.
And within those equality impact needs assessments, we do always consider where the groups intersect.
So as Councillor Belton says, quite often people with a protected characteristic do
who also live in the more deprived areas of the borough,
or there are other health inequalities that intersect with that.
So we always make sure we try and pick those up through those assessments.
On how levels of deprivation have changed, the primary way we
use deprivation data at the moment is the index of multiple deprivation.
And that's not been updated since 2016, so
we're not able to track year on year changes as well as we might like.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I can add some, oh.
Yeah, and if I can add something, we have done a very big piece of work with the Cost
of Living Commission, which actually covers a lot of these inequalities, looked at finances,
housing, transport, and all these things.
Obviously, it's something that I've heard that this committee would like to have another
look at, and I welcome that.
that would be interesting for you all to get a deeper understanding of what the landscape
looked like a couple of years ago and what we have achieved since.
Kathleen, do you want to comment on this one? I've had a plethora of hands come up on a
purchase of time.
Yeah, I just wonder whether it's the title that is confusing people because annual qualities
impact report, maybe, yeah, the points that have been raised you might expect because
of that title, but this is a summary of all of the proactive events and community engagement
activities that we're putting on so as to decrease inequalities and bring communities
together and integrate our different communities.
I think maybe it's the title of the report that is.
Thank you.
Thank you, absolutely.
I agree.
I think that's a helpful clarification.
So I'm now going to come to Councillor Fraser, Apps, Corney, you've already spoken,
so I'm going to go to Councillor Richard -Jones and then Councillor Scritchard.
Thank you, Chair. My point was actually linked to that because I think it's really great to see
the work that's going on across the borough, but it's all really great, outwardly facing stuff.
So, I'm quite just, you know, lots of us will work in organisations where we see these initiatives
And, you know, on page 79 it talks about the staff equality groups that are in place, but
thinking about how that impacts staff here and makes them feel valued and included and,
you know, whatever intersection of grouping that they might be in the council.
So I'm just wondering if you can share any examples of changes that might have been implemented
internally, either through things like the LGBTQ staff networks or one of the other groups
mention that have led to positive change as a result and impact?
I can just speak on for the LGBT staff network.
Well, for the first time, what, two years ago we went on the march.
I went with them last year, I went with them the year before.
My knee hurts, I'm not going this year.
But that's something that's been implemented and I know that from being there, not just
with Wandsworth but also Richmond councillors and staff members, that they definitely feel
valued and seen. We were flying the progress flag up, which also means a lot to them that
it's not just the Pride flag speaking on behalf of that particular group. I also attend the
women's group here in Wandsworth, and I know that it's really important to them that Councillors
are visible and are listening to their concerns. I don't stay for the whole meeting because
they've also got to talk about us when we're not there, but I know that it's very important
to them that we're involved and we're actually listening to their issues as well and being
a woman myself, I can also, I understand a lot of the things that they're talking about
in terms of things like menopause and maternity, paternity and that sort of thing.
Thank you.
Councillor Apps.
Thank you.
So Mr Fisher, you've partly answered one of my questions, which is about are there any
gaps in the diversity data and obviously you picked up an issue the index of
deprivations that's obviously one area are there any others and you know that
could be things that are just not generally measured that we think we
would like to see measured in future whether by the by the government or one
of its agencies or us and secondly I actually would like to sort of join with
councillor corner saying it's great to see this work and it's really good to
see it but be really good to focus on monitoring the impact so it's wonderful
to hear that you're already looking at that
and sort of building that in.
Are there any events that have happened so far
which you think have been particularly good
at fostering community cohesion
and work together across the borough?
And if so, if you could highlight those,
that would be good, thank you.
Yep, so on your first question about the data,
I think we do have really good data available
through the census, that's the gold standard
and provides a lot of data on pretty much
all the protected characteristics and inequality that we're interested in. The problem with
the census is it's once every 10 years. So if you think about now, we're about halfway
between each census. And so it's beginning to not quite be as useful as it once was.
And that's where we have to look to see how we can use local service data and other proxy
data sets to see how we can measure equality.
There was actually a problem with the last census as well, wasn't it, in terms of the
timing, being during the pandemic when many people left London. So thank you. Thank you,
Councillor Richard strength. Thank you, Chair. I mean, to echo the comments of Councillor
corner Councillor Lee and Councillor apps this this documented and in fact, Mr Mr Fisher
introduced it as a document celebrating the activity of the council. And I agree with
that. It reads really is a brochure of what the council has done. But what it what it
hasn't done is, as others have picked up on, has expanded on what the Council believes
the impacts of those have been.
And when I was reading this, the first question I had was, does the Council have an equalities
strategy?
So we don't have an equalities strategy as a standalone document.
What we do have is equality objectives, and I can't remember which page, but they are
included in this report. They're set every four years. And so what we have here is our
proposals to for the next refresh of those. So the current versions were set in 2021.
They reflect the immediate priorities after the pandemic. And so these are what we think
of the areas we need to focus on. Those will be going forward to cabinet for approval on
the 15th of July, I believe. And that is where we have got some of those KPIs, which we mentioned
earlier. I was trying to find them in my notes but I couldn't get there quite quick enough
but if you look on the cabinet paper when that's published that will have those KPIs
that you've asked about.
Thank you.
I've got two thoughts. That's all right.
Very quickly.
Sure. I've noticed the objectives but the, you know, the advantage of a strategy of course
is that you have the objectives, you have your KPIs and then you have a roadmap of how
you're going to meet them.
In terms of the socioeconomic duty, because if Councillor Acunolo would recall that when
this came to committee, a big concern I had was that it wasn't clear what it was we were
asking officers to do when we recognized the socioeconomic duty.
And the reason I flag a strategy is that the socioeconomic duty is possibly the hardest
part of the Equality Act to actually put into practice. It's probably why the national government
hasn't yet activated it and I think that not all the devolved governments have activated
it, maybe they have finally. But could you expand on how you think so far the Council
has sought to meet its socio -economic duty?
Yep, so I would agree that it is the less easy to define characteristic compared to
some of the others, we've taken a fairly expansive view.
Scotland and Wales have both implemented it ahead of us,
so we were able to look and see what they had done
and what other local authorities who had been early adopters
have done.
And from that, we created a fairly comprehensive list
of groups who might be considered
socioeconomically disadvantaged.
So that's people who grew up in more deprived areas
of the borough, care leavers, single parents, people
with health inequalities, people in low income.
So we took a very expansive view.
We mainly monitor those through
the equality impact needs assessments.
My team provides lots of guidance to services
on how to complete those,
where they can find suitable information.
We added pages to Data One, for example,
on where you can find information.
And we are planning a series of videos for staff
on how to take up the duty.
So I think we have done a pretty good job
at implementing it locally.
I think you can always go further
and it's part of my team's role to always provide that constructive challenge to other
services in the organization to make sure they're considering it.
But I think as Councillor Echenola mentioned it, it does show in programs such as Access
for All that we're considering their needs.
I think the challenge you have on the socioeconomic duty aspect is that it's, because obviously
a lot of work has been done to identify groups that are vulnerable, but the duty is more
specific than that.
The duty is to reduce inequalities of outcome that result from socioeconomic disadvantage.
So really, I think what the council ought to do is actually identify outcomes that it
needs to pursue parity of equality in, and then work backwards from that to establish
KPIs.
because I think identifying the vulnerable groups
is part of it, but the duty is to reduce
the inequality of outcome that arises
from the disadvantage that those groups suffer under.
And so that's quite a detailed bit of work.
And I think without doing that link,
link to the end, and then measuring your journey there,
it's almost impossible to discharge
the duty properly I think. I think we do we might not have done it solely through
the lens of socioeconomic duty but in our other strategies such as the cost
of living program, the cost of living Commission, access for all, borough
sanctuary, we do pick up an awful lot of that so though we might not have done it
explicitly with the name socioeconomic duty I think we are doing a fairly good
job of picking up those needs.
Thank you.
Councillor Critchard.
Thank you.
I see that the proposed equality objectives for the next five
years are on page 84.
One of the things that now in reflection I see with this
paper is we don't know what they were previously.
That would have actually been quite interesting.
Maybe that's something you can provide us with so we can
compare what's happening. My question would have was going to be about the
plans to deliver these objectives but then I started thinking particularly
about what Mrs. Olsen had said about understanding the problem and one of the
things I do wonder is whether some of these are as good as we can get and I
think, hinting on what's come out of the Cost of Living Commission, whether there is actually
something that we ought to be thinking about around cost of living, around poverty and
social economic, which Councillor Belton's talked about. And then we also talked a lot
about the Councillor Tax Reduction Scheme and how that was really helping people at
absolutely we knew were in a very difficult financial situation. So my question to the
cabinet might be, can we have another look at, well the cabinet members here, is have
another look at these ones and try and come up with one that actually encapsulates what
we've talked about around financial, so I'm trying to be diplomatic about people being
very poor and having poor outcomes because they have no money.
And that would also fit with the financial inclusion officer, which we all seem to think is a good move.
And maybe that would be something that the cabinet member could take away before the cabinet makes a decision on this in two weeks time.
I mean that's a shame because I was hoping that you would do that as a committee.
but you want to leave it to us to find another objective, if that's correct?
That's not something you would like to do as a committee?
But it would depend if you then decided to postpone it and let us come up with it,
because if it's due to go to Cabinet on the 15th, you know, if you said, there's a lot of nods here.
I think I'll come in and shake. There's clearly been a lot of interest in this paper.
I'm very conscious of time and particular interest in impact and the work of the council and clearly this paper really concentrates on
celebration rather than the whole piece of work in this area, so I take the point that that
Pretty much all members seem to be very interested in this work
so maybe we can take that to the work planning session to consider whether there's further information and I
Don't know. I don't know officers
Is there an opportunity for us to recommend as a committee that we would like cabinet maybe to?
pause and reflect on the quality objectives
that they're thinking of taking to committee on July 14th
and give us some time to look at it as a committee?
Is that something that is feasible
or is there a time date on the objectives
being agreed this month?
I think we can't wait to,
we can't put a pause on actually
delivering on these objectives.
But if there was a specific objective
that you would like to be considered in addition,
and then open to listening to that as well.
But obviously you're gonna discuss that in the work plan,
so I'll wait till the end to hear from you.
And if I may, the cabinet version of the paper
does include more detail about the equality objectives,
because that's the standalone paper
on the equality objectives.
In hindsight, I should have put that in this report as well.
I apologize for that.
How does the paper work here?
Well, sorry, there is just another paper
with solely on the equality objectives going to cabinet on the 15th of July.
So...
Sorry, speaking out of turn, it would have been convenient perhaps to have that paper
at committee this evening, because it perhaps would have preempted a lot of the concerns
that colleagues on both sides of the table have.
I think this...
Mr Evans...
Well, we're all getting to grips with this, aren't we?
I think we...
The agreement to the equality objectives is very much a cabinet decision.
What we brought here is a key decision on that.
What we brought here is a look at all the stuff we're doing around equalities in the
boroughs we've discussed at length.
So I think they're serving slightly different purposes on there.
But if we've not provided enough information, we obviously can take that feedback and move
forward on it.
And perhaps there's committees, do we want to send a recommendation to Cabinet that we
are certainly interested in this area?
And if, should they think there is an opportunity for us to feed in, we would welcome the opportunity
to do so.
We can do that anyway.
Yes, we can.
I am conscious of time.
I do want to move on to the next agenda item.
Councillor Apps, is it very quick?
It was very quick.
Yeah, it's just to suggest that there could be a review
point of this paper.
And so our deliberations, even if they're
over a few months, might still contribute
to the overall impact.
Yes.
Perhaps there could be consideration
of cabinet of opportunities to update the objectives.
Okay, this report is for information.
Can I ask the Committee to note the report?
Thank you for the interest and we'll note the interest in qualities in the work programming section and discuss that more.
So, Item 7, the corporate plan actions and KPIs.
So, this is our update on the year -end.
Mr. Fisher, do you want to introduce the report or can we move straight to questions?
I think, yeah.
Councillor Graham.
Thank you.
So on page 111, we have the customer -centered telephone
service level statistics.
Now, I'm sure I heard the leader of the council
launch a seven -ring, seven -days guarantee,
indeed, sort seven -ring, seven -days.
Put on lots of literature that came paid for through letter
boxes around the borough.
This just talks about seven rings.
The seven days is absent.
It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that on the Council's website, but not on
the literature or in the promises or in the guarantee, it clarifies seven rings, seven
days.
Call us.
Our phone line is open 9 a .m. to 5 p .m., Monday to Friday.
So the seven days and seven rings are two separate commitments.
So the seven rings is about answering telephony in seven rings, obviously, whilst we're open.
You'll see that the data in the KPI is obviously for the whole year and we
committed, we moved to the seven rings commitment I want to say in February. The
seven days is about commitments for areas such as, and excuse me because it's
not my specialist area, graffiti, potholes and street lights, so street signs. Thank
Thank you, Jeremy.
Councillor Hedges?
Yeah, I'm conscious mine might be aimed at Kemi.
Sorry, Councillor Akinola, and she's not here.
But anyway, I'll ask the...
I've got two quick questions on page 105.
The first one is, as I understand, the tendering exercise failed to deliver a successful outcome
for the VCS partnership.
Can you provide more clarity and next steps on that?
And then the second question is just for the section underneath about the ELBOC champions as they have now awarded
92 ,000 pounds worth of funding and it would be good to get some oversight on that given that
That is now delegated to the champions and we don't see any oversight of that at the Grants Committee. Thank you
Thank you. I think council Akkinen has just come back into the room. So a question
on the LVOT champions and also on the VCS partnership tendering.
Sorry, you want me to answer whether you can get some oversight?
I think we've reported actually, it's been reported what the money was spent on,
the projects that it's been spent on, I think that will continue to be well reported.
They're doing a fantastic job actually and I think it's really good and evident that we as a council
are changing the way that we are working with our residents by giving them ownership over
projects that are happening in their own environments locally.
So I think it's really wonderful.
I think that at some point we might want to actually dispense all of our grants in this
way, which would be wonderful if they do it in Camden and lots of other places across
London.
participatory grant giving, if you fancy looking that up.
I think it's a really good way of us engaging with
and being more democratic with our residents.
And what was the other question?
Oh sorry, just going back to the old box champions,
it was just to understand what sort of metrics
and the methodology of them actually awarding the grants
to understand a bit more about that.
And then the other question was,
as I understand the tendering exercise failed
to deliver a successful outcome for the VCS partnership.
It would be great to understand a bit more clarity on that and then next steps.
Thank you.
The metrics they are using is no different from the metrics that you use at Grants Committee.
Is it a good project?
Is it well thought through?
Have they got the right sort of partners?
Is it going to deliver what is needed, wanted, will be used in the areas that they live in?
So it's exactly, of course everything is documented.
We love paperwork in the council.
And with regards to the VCS strategy,
we've got a meeting on the 14th of July
with the voluntary sector to feedback to them
on how we're moving forward and the CVS,
that well, the support that we're gonna provide
to the voluntary sector over the next couple of months.
Not at liberty to go into my new show of each in particular bid, mainly because I wasn't
involved in each particular bid, but it was unsuccessful as it's been widely publicised,
unfortunately.
But we will be working with community organisations to deliver the best possible service for the
voluntary sector.
Thank you, Councillor Acanola. I just need to say that guillotine has now fallen, so
we will consider the following agenda as follows. So we'll continue to debate this item for
a further 10 minutes, then we'll vote, and then we will move to the next item on the
agenda without any debate and vote. And so I'm going to now come to Councillor Fraser
for a question.
I'd be relieved to know my question was going to be on the lift platform, but Mrs. Mary
you talked about it earlier so you can move on.
Councillor Corner.
Yeah, thank you.
Really interested in page 93 about the Alton Renewal Plan
and the work on low -paid employment.
I think this actually coincidentally plays
into the equality strategy as well
and talk about tackling socioeconomic disadvantage.
How did we get that funding?
Why is it only Roehampton and to what extent
might the causes of low -paid employment in Roehampton
tell us about the rest of the borough as well.
And to what extent are,
Shall I come in on that question whilst Council accords?
So yeah, on the town center KPI, page 101 at the bottom there.
Promoting support investment in the borough's town centers is part of developing place based approach.
Got a list of the town centers.
will the council add nine elms to that given the extent of regeneration and the

7 Corporate Plan Actions and KPIs Performance Monitoring (Paper No. 25-240)

need to support the community there in the coming years?
I'll answer the first part of your question on the low -pay employment so
that was came out of a recommendation that the cost of living Commission had
made that's why it focused on Roehampton in particular because that was an area
that the Commission had focused on in particular. It's been funded through the
living fund reserve but in fact the decision that Economic Development
Office have taken is that it's be really useful to compare it to other areas of
the borough so we we are focusing on Roehampton but we're also comparing it to
other areas that are more deprived in the borough as well for precisely those
reasons.
Councillor Crichard.
Thank you. I wonder if I get to...
Shh.
Page 91. One of the things that was interesting I saw, we have become a founding member of
the DWP led Identifying Local Vulnerability Working Group. I was interested to know what
that involved, but if that's a longer answer, I'm very happy to have something written,
but it sounds like it links in with what we've been talking about, about identifying poverty
and people on low income and how to help them.
Councillor Evans.
I don't know if Miss Mary wants to...
Oh, Mrs Mary.
Yes, exactly that.
It's about identifying financial vulnerability through the use of DWP data.
Yeah.
Would you be able to give us a bit more of that?
Yeah, will do, yeah.
Councillor Graham.
Yes, so obviously this is looking at corporate plan actions for 2024 -25 at the year end.
I just wanted to ask a two -part question.
The first bit related to that is when we can expect to see the corporate plan actions for 2026 -27 outlined.
Mr. Fisher.
They will be going to cabinet as part of a key decision and then you'll be getting updates
on the mid -year point in the September or October cycle.
When will they be going to cabinet approximately if you're able to say?
I believe there is, I can't remember off the top of my head, we've got a draft that we're
working on so it will be not this cycle but the next one I believe, next cabinet.
Okay, that's helpful.
The second part of the question, therefore, given what we heard earlier about what may be happening to council tax in the integrated settlement,
which we will get in December and we'll start applying even under transitional arrangements from 2026, 2027,
whether Councilor Ayn expects to include as an action, residents will pay the same low council tax.
The decisions about the council tax next year will be informed ones, which means we'll make
them when we have all the information.
I wasn't asking about the decision for council tax setting.
I was asking whether that would be a corporate plan action.
Well, I'm not going to make up stories to say what we're going to do if we haven't
decided already.
You haven't?
We will continue to help our residents by having the lowest council tax possible.
So I think what I've heard is that you haven't decided whether residents will pay the same
low council tax yet.
You've heard me say that we haven't set the level of council tax.
We don't expect to until we have all the full information.
Thank you very much, Councillor Allen.
So I'll draw those questions to a close.
I'm sorry there wasn't as much time.
This report is for information.
I ask you to note the report.
Moving on then to item nine, the work program discussion.
So we're fortunate to have a new refreshed, more collaborative approach.
We've started a conversation on Monday about short -listing potential items.
We will continue to have that discussion at a forthcoming session, which I hope will be
before the end of July as an opportunity to agree priorities for scrutiny.
And I think there's been some good discussions and ideas that have come out this evening during the discussion.
Please feel free to contact me or Democratic Services about other ideas that you might have either inside the meeting or outside the meeting.
So I guess as we have reached the guillotine, are the recommendations in the report agreed to note the approach to the work program?
Thank you very much. Thank you very much everybody for coming tonight.

8 Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee Work Programme (Paper No. 25-241)

Sorry we've run over the guillotine. Thank you to Mr. Wurman for taking the minutes and I'll see you in October.
Thank you. Bye -bye.