Transcript

Gentlemen, thank you for coming to our first Cabinet Meeting of the New Year. Happy New Year to you all. I hope you've all had a pleasant break and welcome to you all. Thank you. Let's start. The usual drill about fire alarms and filming of this meeting. Other than that, there's no public questions, I understand. Great. Let's move on to any apologies. I know Simon is in jury service, so Ashraf, you're here on his behalf. Thank you. Please. I met with the Chair of Ovingian Scrutiny earlier today and she wanted to advise you. I'll just let you know there's been no meeting since she was last attended, so she won't be here. Okay. Thank you. Shupriya Iqbal is off six, so I'm here. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, oh yeah, so Jill is here in place of Shupriya Iqbal, our Chief Legal Officer. Thank you. Wish you all the best. Great. No other apologies. Let's move on. Any declarations of interest, anyone? None. Thank you very much. Announcements, please. Thank you, Mayor. Just three this evening to bring members up to speed with the fact that the Ideas Store in Watney Market launched its Learning Lab today and the Deputy Mayor attended. It's a new, ultra-modern learning lab which can accommodate full adult learning programmes along with other advice and support services and it was funded through Section 106 that was previously agreed. Secondly, the Wapping Youth Centre opened this week following a refurbishment. And you may have seen in national media a police appeal for a man who attempted to kidnap two children in Bow on the 27th of November. The police are still looking for this man and this week released an e-fit artist's impression for him. And our community safety team and communication service are working with the police to publicise and find the individual. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can I just ask, I've got a statement to make before I do so, can I just ask Steve or Mayyum, how many centres we've opened so far in Young Tower Hamlets? How many wards have we done? Fifteen. Fifteen, yeah? Okay, so we've got five more to go. Okay. We're on track, I assume, yeah? Great. Good, good, good. What the market idea store, we inherited a closed idea store to reopen that and get fantastic new labs in. Well, thank you to the officers, well done to you and to the lead member. Grateful to you. Can I just make the following statement, please? We've got a very busy agenda today and very importantly, the agenda on the budget report, the medium-term financial strategy. It's very important later on and a discussion later on. I'll leave it to the lead member to make, introduce it, make comments, but I want to make the following comments in the meantime. Once again, I hope you all have had a fantastic break and a good new year. I'm very much looking forward to this year. I think it's an exciting year ahead of us to build on what we've done so far and continue the ambitious agenda that we started back in May 2022. But this cabinet is one in which we demonstrate our continued delivery of a balanced, sustainable and transformative medium-term financial strategy. A strategy that shows that financial prudency and sensibility does not need to come at the expense of cuts in frontline services, at the expense of our residents of Tawhamda, who always come first. A strategy that exposes that the cuts that came during the seven years of the previous administration were political choices, not financial necessities. This budget report builds upon the investment and good financial governance that we, as an administration, have put in place since May 2022. I would like to take a moment to run through some of the highlights of this report. It is indeed a balanced budget, balanced for the next three years. And we will continue to deliver our ambitious investment in the people of Tawhamda. We have delivered on all earmarked savings. Indeed, the budget set by the Council last year, on the 28th of February 2024, secured a balanced position across the medium term and exceeded its savings target with £43.4 million across the three years. This reiterates, ladies and gentlemen, the findings of the government's best value inspection of this Council that recognises the strength and robustness of our Council's finances. And we are going further to reiterate our commitment to good financial governance. I am pleased to announce that we are increasing our general fund reserve to £25 million to meet SITFA best practice guidance, although we are not obliged to do so constitutionally. We have always said that an authority can have healthy reserves and invest in services. And this report demonstrates that we have achieved both. It also means that we can confidently deliver the life-changing services we have introduced as a Council, as well as additional services that I will turn to presently without dipping into reserves or creating a hole in our finances. This means we will continue to deliver education maintenance allowance for hundreds of students across the borough. Already, 1,550 students have benefited from this £600 award and we can now match and hope to exceed this amount in the years to come. We will continue to deliver university bursaries for hundreds of students looking to pursue their education at universities. We believe that every child has a right to continue their education to the highest level and we can now build on the 800 children who receive £1,500 awards which have been made to date. Again, a figure I hope we can exceed in the coming years. We can continue to invest nearly £14 million per year into our youth services. Hence, I asked, I mean, how many awards have we opened the youth centres in? We can continue to deliver free school meals for all primary and secondary school children, a £5.4 million a year investment, benefiting some 38,000 people, saving each family an average of £550 a year. We can continue to invest in and enhance our in-sourced leisure services, ensuring that an accessible and, where necessary, culturally sensitive programmes of activities are available to our residents. Further to this, this budget means we can keep all of our swimming pools open and are increasing the number by at least one in St George's Leisure Centre with more to follow. It also means that we can continue to provide free swimming for all women and girls aged 16 and above and all men aged 55 and over, allowing for an increase in health and well-being. More investment is due to come. We can continue with winter field payments for all residents who lost access to the existing scheme due to government cuts. This means that 5,000 residents can claim £175 towards their energy bills during the coldest months. We can continue to invest in our waste services to keep our streets clean, with an additional £14 million being invested into the services over the next three years. That means more staff, better equipment, more collections and, more importantly, cleaner streets and estates. We can continue to freeze council tax. Yes, freeze council tax. For the next three years, for those earning £50,350 or less, working families should not pay for the cost of living crisis. We can proceed to provide free home care for all our residents. This will be launched in April of this year, a £4.9 million per year investment in our elderly and the most vulnerable in our community. We can continue with our comprehensive reinvestment programme to ensure our streets are safe for all our residents. For example, nearly over £3 million invested in CCTV cameras across the borough and the £1.5 million towards the recruitment of additional 44 townless enforcement officers, bringing them up to 72. We are building in this budget more staff and more equipment to be installed across the borough. We can proceed with our pledge to reopening a cultural sensitive women's centre in due course and very confident it will be delivered by summer of this year. We will continue with the reopening of a culturally sensitive drug rehabilitation facility also by summer of this year, latest by summer of this year. We can continue to provide key services from our reopened five one-stop shops, resident hubs across the borough and we'll be introducing a strengthened offer so that residents can resolve more of the issues nearer to their homes. I've asked the Chief Executive for a paper to see how we can revert to the old and a better offer, the old one-stop shops across the borough. And Steve is kindly looking into that. A paper should come in due course. We can continue with our reintroduction of one-hour free parking for customers shopping in shops in our markets. And we can continue to robustly invest into the accelerated delivery of thousands of affordable homes to tackle the overcrowding prices in our borough. David Joyce and his team know and Kobin know the priority for us for reducing overcrowding and providing people with family-sized homes in the borough is a priority for us. These are just some of the services, the ambitious services that we can continue to deliver thanks to the financial prudence we have adopted in our authority. Since May 2022, we have delivered over £90 million investment. Yes, £90 million investment in frontline services, ladies and gentlemen, with no cuts to starving or negative changes to terms and conditions. A fact we are incredibly proud of in this borough. And we are pleased to announce that this delivery has been enhanced with two new schemes that I can confirm today. We have already outlined the importance that the attainment of good education can have in improving life chances and removing people out of poverty. We are indeed a deprived borough. We are also one of the hardest working and aspirational boroughs in the country. As an administration, we are trying to ensure that regardless of class, religion, skin colour, all children in town are given every opportunity to realise their dreams. This is not an easy task. And the financial burden that sending children through school, college and then on to university can place great pressure on families. Every parent wants their children to have the best life chances. And as a council, we are trying to support them in this endeavour. That is why we are incredibly proud to announce that we will be introducing a free school uniform payment for every child entering reception and every child entering year 7 whose parents earn less than £50,350. For primary school reception aged children, this will represent a £50 payment. And for secondary school starters, this will represent a £150 payment. This signifies a three-year total investment of £3 million and we expect it to benefit some 7,000 children per year. That's many families. 21,000 children over the next three years, ladies and gentlemen. This is the latest in our mission to support children and their families through their educational journey. They will receive support when their child starts primary school through free school meals and financial support for the school uniforms. They will receive support when the child starts secondary school through the continuation of free school meals and another payment towards their uniform cost. This will be supplemented by educational and professional support through our rejuvenated youth service, Young Talahandas. They will receive support as the child goes into college and sixth form and hopefully to university through the payment of EMA and university bursaries. In total, ladies and gentlemen, this takes our total investment per year in young people alone to over £25 million. No other authority in the country, I think, can match this kind of aspiration for our youngsters that we have in our borough. We will continue to do all we can to support our working families and their child's journey towards achieving their dreams and full potential. And we are immensely proud to present this fully costed policy at today's Cabinet. I am also pleased to confirm that we will be reintroducing meals on wheels. Our elderly also very much matter to us as part of this medium-term financial strategy. We have set aside £1 million a year to support our elderly and vulnerable residents with receiving a wholesome, nutritious, hot meal per day. This represents a £3 million total investment of the next three years. This, coupled with the £1.8 million investment into ensuring our pensioners do not go cold during the winter through the winter fuel payment represents nearly a total investment of a further £5 million per year, reassuring our elderly and vulnerable residents that they will be supported with their heating and eating. We are also increasing investment in key areas. For example, the additional £15 million enhancement of our wage services mentioned earlier, around £50 million. In fact, this Budget will see a further £54.9 million of new investment into frontline services and support for residents in this current Budget. This will also include our dedicated drugs unit of TEOS to tackle drugs-related issues in the borough, a total of over £550,000 additional investment in community safety. Similarly, it will include £1 million additional investment into SEND support, especially for those families with children transitioning into adulthood from 18 to 25. This includes free swimming sessions for children and their carers, additional psychologist support, and additional respite support for families. This strategy will also see the delivery of £77 million in additional savings, ladies and gentlemen, without any cuts in frontline services or compulsory redundancy. This means that by the end of this MTFS, in three years' time, from years 2022 to 2028, this Council will have delivered nearly £150 million in frontline investment and over £100 million in savings. This is the definition of a balanced Budget, of setting savings with the necessary frontline investment to ensure that residents receive the best services that we can afford to provide and to support growth and more employment in this borough. As per our manifesto in 2022, we promised our residents a real and lasting change. This Budget represents this change and the continuation of what we started back in 2022. I would like to thank all the Corporate Directors, the Chief Executive, and in particular the Corporate Director of Resources, the Section 151 Officer and her brilliant team, and also the Lead Member and all the other Lead Members for the work that you have done in putting this Budget together. I very much look forward with the Lead Member to bringing this Budget to full Council in February, and I hope that politicians across the Board can support this balanced Budget and the ambitious programmes and growths that we have introduced. And we'll provide an update on the capital strategy at a further Cabinet meeting later this month. Thank you, and thank you for being with me. I'm grateful to you. Okay. That's now... Now questions from... or comments from over in Scrutiny of the Cabinet meetings next week. Can we now move on to the Cabinet paper, please? Yep. 5.1, the Budget, the report. Please, Said. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This medium-term financial strategy has a balanced position over its three-year period. This excellent MTFS funds the Council's priorities and has no adverse impact on frontline services. There is £65 million of additional investment, mainly in the community, and it builds on the positive financial comments in the Best Value Report by addressing the issues that were raised and providing £6 million for further improvements across the Council. Other investments include, which you have just touched on, Mr. Mayor, £15 million investment in the waste service, £7.5 million to provide free home care, a community financial resilience fund of £6 million, including support to primary and secondary school starters to pay for a school uniform, £3.1 million for the Mayor's energy fund to help protect vulnerable residents. Tower Hamlets has the sixth lowest Council tax in London and to ensure that those who can least afford an increase in general Council tax remain protected through the Council Tax Cost of Living Support Fund, which we created last year. This will be expanded to a household income cap of £50,350. Household income below that amount will be protected from paying any increase in Council tax. Additionally, the 100% local Council tax support scheme will remain, meaning those on lowest income will pay no Council tax, as always. Several national and global risks exist, to which Tower Hamlets is not immune, and to help mitigate risk, a new £5 million contingency will be created and the general fund reserves will be increased to £25 million. Mr Mayor, I am delighted to present this budget today, which is a forward-looking budget, and it clears all legacy issues we've faced since taking office in 2022. This budget invests in prosperity and benefits thousands of children and families. It is a prudent, sustainable and a budget that went through a rigorous process, yet, once again, a robust process over the most of last year. This budget is about the future of this borough and the future of the lives of our residents. It continues the great work from our previous years and complements it even more as we move forward. Lastly, I want to thank you, Mr Mayor, the members, officers, corporate directors, Mayor's Office, Sam and Ali Bohr, and the finance team, Asan, Chris, Abdul Razak, and, of course, Julie, for all the hard work. And I'm grateful to everyone for the support we have so far, and it's just a matter of looking forward and growing even further. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I'd like to hand over to Julie to cover the more important bits that I've missed out. As ever, councillor, you don't miss any important bits out. It's a real privilege to sit here and watch the conclusion of what has been a very robust and thorough process. And it's a collective responsibility. It's not a finances budget. It's the organisation's budget and corporate director colleagues have all played a key role in making their respective contributions. Sometimes it falls to me, often it falls to me, to make sure that we have a very realistic picture moving forward. And that realistic picture includes, from my perspective, the following. A budget's a plan. It's a great plan. It's a great budget. It's a set of numbers on a piece of paper. We have to deliver the plan. And delivering the budget is what will make the difference to the community that the mayor has spoken about, the difference to the number of houses, the difference to the quality of education. It's all focused on delivery. The other area I need to focus on is risk. The biggest risk to Tower Hamlets is not delivering the great budget. But there are also risks that even though we can try and take them into account, we can try very hard to predict the future accurately. And that's what we're doing. We're looking three years ahead. We're not psychic. So there will be things that today we don't know about. And the best we can do is be aware of those risks and make provision for us to be able to weather a storm. And part of my job is to ensure that the council has the financial resilience to weather a storm should those storms happen. And this council does. The specific areas of risk I would draw your attention to largely relate to national issues. Fund and reform, particularly for Tower Hamlets, the government has recently announced a fund and reform consultation. That includes business rates reform. And for Tower Hamlets, business rates is a significant source of our income. At the same time, we also have one of the most deprived and dense populations in London. And the same funding reform should address the balance in RSG funding. But it is a risk for us. Business rates even without reform are a risk. We have seen a year of business rate appeals. And when you have huge, significant businesses whose base is changing, perhaps from large single offices to smaller units, there is a financial risk that falls to the authority. There are real demand pressures when you have a highly dense population, particularly around SEND, particularly around adult social care, and particularly around homelessness. We do, as all councils do, well, the vast majority, have a dedicated schools grant deficit. And we await the government's decisions as to how they're going to address this nationally. The impact for Tower Hamlets of that deficit at the moment is £18.5 million, which is not unaffordable, but wouldn't be something that we would want to land on top of us unexpectedly. And, of course, we have inflation and pay awards as the general economy. Fluctuates, as it will. We can't take away any of those risks. What we can do is ensure that we are aware of them, mitigate them as best we can. We take data-led decisions. We understand our demands. We understand our population. We take all those into account in the budget. And we listen to where risks have been identified and flagged towards. And the councillor didn't mention we had a BVI inspection. Finance and financial resilience and financial planning emerged extremely well from that inspection. But those inspectors did make some observations, all of which have been addressed in full in the budget in front of us. And they related to ensuring the investment in waste was ongoing, which it now is. The investment in housing options service was ongoing, which it now is. They were concerned about reliance on reserves. The budget before you requires no reliance on reserves at all to fund recurring costs. You recall that we had significant savings to deliver in year. And a huge proportion of those, 48%, were around income generation. And that was a risk. Not only did we deliver those savings, but in this budget, only 2% of the savings presented are reliant on income generation. And in addition to that, we've listened to the inspectors, and as the councillor said, set aside £6 million to fund the continued improvements that the council wishes to take place. On top of all that, we have ensured, as the mayor said, in line with best practice, we've increased our minimum reserve balances and built in an extra £5 million resilience. And all of that adds up, in total to, around an extra £20 million of risk mitigation that we've built in and removing the £7 million of risk that the BVI identified. Other than that, and I know it makes me sound like the boring accountant, and I do congratulate the councillors and colleagues on what I believe to be a very sound budget. But we are in difficult times. It is about delivery and it is about understanding and managing those risks. Thank you. Thank you, Julie. I'm very grateful to you. Steve Stenvey, you want to add at this stage? You're okay? Yep. Councillors, please, Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Mr Mayor. I would like to thank the lead member, Julie, Abdul Rajak and our officers, the whole team, for the hard work and commitment they put in, not just into this budget, but obviously previous budgets as well. I mean, this is why we, you know, got involved into politics. This is why I got involved into politics, to make a difference and serve the people of this borough, despite where they come from and what colour they are. This is a people's budget and that's why, Mr Mayor, again and again, people of this borough, they trust you, they vote you in. Despite all the slight tackles and slight side tackles by the mainstream, some of the mainstream politicians, still you keep to win because the people of this borough trust you. And the budget is a classic example. Last budget was an example, this budget is an example. So, I mean, over £150 million into the residence pocket of this borough. It's amazing. Nowhere in the country you'll see a budget like this. And as a lead member for young people, I am extremely proud. Nearly £43 million into young people, investment into young people. From 2023 to 2027, over £43 million investment. Nowhere in the country. So I'm extremely proud. And thank you to you, thank you to our cabinet and our officers for the work. It's a collective work, it's a partnership work, and I am grateful and I'm looking forward to the budget and the full council. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Anyone else? Please. I'll bring Moustak in. Is that okay? Why? Then I'll bring Kobir. Is that okay, Kobir? Yeah? Okay. Brother Moustak. Thank you, Mr Mayor. This budget I would describe as a bold and compassionate plan designed to prioritise and uplift the most vulnerable residents in our community. It reflects our deep commitment to inclusivity, addressing key challenges through targeted investments and initiatives. This budget allocates resources to support young people with special educational needs and disabilities, particularly those with autism and learning disabilities. Thus, it focuses on promoting independent living, community access and employment opportunities. Mr Mayor, this budget restores a crucial service to combat isolation among elderly residents, ensuring access to nutritious meals that support health and well-being. This budget tackles the cost of living crisis by providing financial relief to pensioners and vulnerable households struggling with energy costs with flexible provisions for additional assistance. Furthermore, this budget introduces universal free home care from April 2025, empowering disabled and chronically ill residents by removing the financial burden of care. Finally, Mr Mayor, this budget demonstrates a clear commitment to this administration's social equity, this administration's aspiration to social equity, focusing on practical, transformative measures to improve the quality of life for those most in need. It is a progressive, inclusive approach to governance that addresses critical issues with compassion and foresight. Thank you for your visionary leadership and thank you the corporate director, Julie, our lead member and those involved in the hard work and efforts being made to produce such an excellent budget. Thank you very much. Thank you, lead member. Councillor Waheed, thank you, Mr Mayor. Firstly, I want to applaud you in terms of your having the vision and actually putting where the promises that we made in our manifesto pledge and also I want to applaud and thank the lead member, Julie and her team for actually putting this budget, a robust budget, a balanced budget and working on it. I have to mention a few things without having to actually repeat some of the things which Mr Mayor you've already mentioned. I'm very proud. Again, I want to thank the lead member for education, for actually opening our youth clubs which were totally closed down under the previous administration. This shows our commitment to our young people and the future of our borough. Also, the insourcing of our leisure facilities, this gives us the opportunity to shape shape and tackle some of the inequalities that we have when it comes to health and well-being. Also, the EMA, Mr Mayor, that you mentioned as well as the university bursary that we're continuing to support and continue to roll out for our young people and also the additions in terms of the support for our reception students who are going into reception as well as the year seven secondary school students who will be getting support for their school uniform. Like I said, this shows commitment from this administration as well as yourself and politicians. Like you said, Mr Mayor, cuts is a political choice, but we understand and we know the needs of our community and I'm proud to sit here and support this budget and once again, thank everyone who was behind this budget. Thank you. Grateful. Copy, please. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Like my colleagues, I want to start off by thanking yourself, Mr Mayor, Lead Member Saeed, Corporate Director Julie Lorraine and her finance team. Along with that, I think we went through nearly a year of rigorous star chamber processes where each corporate director and each director of each department needed to come and defend their position and their store. This is the outcome of a year-long process of multiple meetings, exhaustive meetings at times. So I want to focus on the HRA and part of it is reassurance for our residents that within the HRA we have currently 46 new build programs which are running and that will come to fruition delivering thousands of homes for our residents. We also have an acquisition program of 237. And in addition to this, Mr Mayor, we have a headroom of nearly 75 million pounds for new pipeline programs to deliver. it's important to also acknowledge that the existing stock also needs repair and regulatory improvements around fire safety as well as building safety and decent homes work. We have an additional 140 million pound allocated over a five-year period for that. Now, the crux of this also impacts on daily lives of residents. So around housing options which has been mentioned, an additional 1.9 million pounds has gone in there. And we know it's a stress factor, a pinch point for every single council in this country and certain councils are going bankrupt as a result of the level of spend. So we have taken a bold step to invest to save by putting in 1.9 million pounds directly in housing options and further growth within temporary accommodation as well to facilitate this challenge. Now, behind the budget, a budget can be just numbers on a piece of paper with no meaning to it. And previous administrations and administrations all across the country can set budgets yet overspend on this budget. However, budgets have to have controls in place. Budgets have to have accountability and corporate directors lead that level of accountability in this council. Budgets have to have strengthened governance and procurement processes. And what this budget demonstrates with the accountability of the corporate directors and the politicians is that we have a transparent, accountable, controlled budget in place. And this is a budget, when we went to the LGA conference late last year, councillor after councillor from councils across the country came and approached myself and other fellow townhouse delegates to understand where do you create growth from when the rest of the country is cutting, cutting, cutting. Well, we have an excellent CLT, we have an excellent administration led by the mayor and that's how we deliver it. So read through this budget and lessons can be learned. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ask councillor Kibliya Chodhul to bring Shafirin and others in place? Please. Thank you. Thanks, Khabir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This budget report and medium-term financial strategy is a big step forward, making Tower Hamlets the first council in the UK to bring back the free home care. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for fulfilling your commitment and I also feel proud as a lead member for health and well-being. It also provides extra support for adults with learning disabilities, helping them to thrive and gain independence. This budget shows that we as a council are more than capable of look after our vulnerable residents while still balancing our budget. Residents will be benefited from this budget in every aspect of their life and this is a people budget. And again, I thank our officers and lead members for their hard work to produce such a balanced and robust and prudent budget. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm grateful. Councillor Shafi, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and good evening all. Delighted to be here. This is my first budget for the financial year and to be honest, the Tuesdays afternoon star chambers was a drag, was a trauma, but sitting here today I can really be proud of what has been delivered. I'd like to commend the mayor, as everyone else in this room has mentioned, the vision, the hard work and also the members, CLT members and lead member for making this happen. Many, many hours has gone into this process. Today we are just presenting, but for the last six to eight months it has been a drag and it has been a vision for the mayor to make sure that we are sustainable and we have a balanced budget and today we can sit here and say we have that and we are, we could be a showcase or a benchmark for other councils to follow this budget. I'd like to commend the mayor on visioning the children and the young people of this borough where today the announcement of the free uniforms, the announcement of free, the only, you know, we know that we are the only borough in the whole country providing free school moves for secondary children and these are just the beginning and free home care coming in 2025 is an amazing, amazing result for this administration. I think everyone sitting here, we should be proud that we were elected in 2022 under the leadership of Mayor Lutub Rahman to deliver for the people of this borough and I believe that the people have made the right choice and we believe this mayor is the people's mayor, this budget is the mayor's budget and long may the success continue. I'd like to just make a quote here that I've always said, it says work hard in silence, let success make the noise and today surely success will make the noise. Thank you very much. Thank you, grateful to you. Please, Tala. Thank you, Mr Mayor. Can I just first start off just like my fellow lead members, thank you, the CLT, the lead member, all the members here in drafting this budget and at the same time I want to follow on from what Councillor Shafi mentioned, it's been a year of hard work from across everyone in this chamber and I think even though I've been off for bereavement the last two days I felt I had to be here because you know you've worked hard, everyone here has worked hard to bear this fruit and I had to be here to sort of support this budget. So I prepared some lines before and I thought I'd share them with everyone today. So over the past couple of months I've had a number of interesting meetings with community safety lead members from other boroughs. In these meetings we discussed investment in public services, the state of their budgets and new ways to work together. Time and again what I heard from other lead members was that their councils are struggling to stay above water and are sacrificed in frontline services that vulnerable residents rely on to keep their budgets balanced. For these councils there is little room for innovation in the face of budget cuts that never seem to end. Until 2022 this was how Tower Hamlets was being run as well. A mindset of austerity governed what was possible and investing in things like youth services, community spaces, crime prevention and anti-poverty measures were out of the question. The previous administration felt that in order to keep the council stable we had to limit our expectations of how much we can do for our residents. When I look at this budget that we have brought to cabinet today I see a complete and total rebuke of the idea that we cannot invest in our community and balance our budget at the same time. When budget pressures tightened this year we didn't roll back any of our groundbreaking new investments. Instead we reviewed our spending, streamline operations and we've come back with a balanced budget that cut zero programs or services and includes investment in a host of new projects. We've proven that the types of investment and change that some said were impossible can in fact be done without damaging our finances. I'm particularly fond of this budget because of the holistic approach it takes to addressing crime and poverty in the borough. On the end, on one end we will be funding a new specialist drugs unit as a dedicated resource to take on the widespread issue of drug trafficking and ASP that has plagued this borough for far too long. Through a combination of engagement, investigation and targeted enforcement alongside the police, this one-of-a-kind team will set the new standard for how local authorities can crack down on illegal drug markets in a way that is both effective and tailored to the needs of the community. We will also be investing further in our CCTV provision through additional operators as well as other technical upgrades that will make our network unrivaled as a crime-fighting tool. Combine this with the millions in growth that have already gone into expanding our CEO team and the result is a council enforcement service unlike any other in London. This unique capacity is why we've also invested in the commercial manager to help us market our enforcement services to housing associations, registered social landlords, allowing us to both generate revenue and ensure that every single local resident, regardless of whether they're a town that's council tenant or a housing association, has access to the highest standard of public safety. However, as everyone in this room knows, enforcement alone cannot put an end to crime. In order to truly make this borough a safer place for all, we will also need to address the widespread poverty and inequality that drives so many to make bad decisions and destroy their lives. This is why every pound spent on the enforcement measure was spending two pounds on anti-poverty funding and support programs targeted at our most fundable residents. This includes reinvestment in mills-on-wills, new energy and fuel grants for our poorest community members and expanded support for children and adults with learning disabilities. What I see when I look at this budget is a real pathway to a borough where we are not only safer but also healthier, more equal and more financially stable. Today we continue to prove that no matter what other political leaders may tell you, it is possible to support, provide for and change lives of our constituents without going broke. Thank you. Thank you. Grateful. I think anyone else? Nope. Steve, do you want to come in? Please, yeah. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make one final point. Officers have been thanked for their hard work and I know that they know how much the Mayor and I appreciate what's gone on to this. And I, the comment that Councillor Kabir Ahmed made about the amount of time that members have spent at star chambers, at MAB-SARP sessions, at MAB sessions is appreciated by officers, because it gives a steer and it gives strategic direction and it shows that the executive is working, the officer executive is working to deliver the Mayor's agenda. I did want to make a slightly separate point in that, as you know, Mayor, I attend meetings with the other 30-odd chief executives across London and they sometimes cannot help themselves in passing comment about what we're able to do in Tower Hamlets that others aren't able to do. And I thought it would just be worth recording that I have been contacted about us sharing this best practice through the offices of the Corporate Director of Resources and her team to other authorities that would benefit from learning from our expertise and the way in which this budget has been delivered. And I think it's worth recording that this evening in the minutes of Cabinet. Thank you. Grateful, Steve. Just before we conclude this and look at the recommendations, can I say once again thank all the officers. I know members have worked hard, but at the end of the day, you know, without your help, corporate actors and officers and chief executive, you know, we cannot deliver a a sustainable budget and very importantly deliver on our growth, deliver on our saving pledges. So your buying, your support and your active cooperation is extremely important. Continue the good work that we've started. So thank you once again and beg for your support going forward. It's very important to us. Look at the budget. Our reserve is very healthy. Reserve generally overall is very healthy. Both earmarked and un-earmarked reserves. But more importantly, the general fund constitutionally we're required to keep £20 million in there, you know, on recommendation from Julia and I think it's good for you. We've increased it to £25 million. Without any cut in frontline services, without any compulsory redundancy, you know, we've delivered on our savings targets and even more. But we've invested in the people of this borough. That's what we came in for. You know, people gave us the mandate. They elected us to invest in them. And we made a promise that give us a chance and we will serve you. You will be our priority. Give us a chance and we will deliver a manifesto for change. We've started that work. The £150 million of growth of the duration of the MTFS last three years, going forward next three years, that is something that this council, this organisation should be proud of. This means that, truly means that our resident comes first. They are the most important people for whom we are here and all of us are here, both elected members and officers. We've got to continue that momentum, the ambition that we have for the people of the borough. Some of the innovation that we've introduced clearly reflects our ambition. And hopefully going forward, you know, we can look at together more innovative ways of bringing about and delivering more change for the people of this borough. So thank you once again. Can we look at the recommendations and can we please approve what's been set out to go forward? Note some aspects of the report, agree some aspects of the recommendation and go forward with the recommendations to full council. Is that okay? Agree. Thank you. Grateful to. Can we now move on to 5.2 police youth service progress update? May you please, yeah. Put your mic on. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Again, this is a positive, in fact it's a great progress update. With over 90% of the team have completed child-first training. Our audit process has been highlighted as best practice nationally and our continuous reduction of children entering into formal criminal justice system has reduced by 41%. So I've got Kelly and Susanna there who would go in detail in terms of the report. Thank you. UK, Steve, do you want to talk or please? Just very briefly. So just to echo what the lead member said, the really positive progress is evidenced in this report. Also a reminder that we provide services on behalf of City of London as well who are very pleased with the work we do with them. I chair the Youth Justice Management Board, so get to see firsthand the excellent work of both our teams and the partnership and I'm really grateful to Susanna and Kelly and their teams for all the hard work. And you'll see in the report some of the direction of travel and the amount of improvement they've achieved is really worth celebrating. So thank you. Thank you for having us. This is part of our annual update for our Youth Justice strategic plan. The initial plan was created for 23 to 25, so we are in a... This year will be a brand new one, but we have to do an update for the Youth Justice Board, so we like to bring it to Cabinet to show all of our partners and our lead members the progress we've made. So just to give you a bit of a context, as I said, it is a strategic plan that we have to do every year for the Youth Justice Board. It's part of our condition of our Youth Justice Grant. And in the last 12 months, or since our inspection in April 22, we've had a lot of external partners and external experts come in to review us, including peer reviews. We've used justice professionals and experts, external auditors and moderators looking at quality of our service, and we've developed our communications plan. This is just a brief snapshot of the children in our Youth Justice cohort. As you can see, out of our children, there are lots and lots of needs that they have, including speech and language, being at risk of sexual and criminal exploitation, being looked after, being known to children in social care, substance misuse concerns, mental health. And the types of offences that our children are committing range from breaches and frauds and burglaries, quite low level, small numbers of children committing that. But the top three offences in our borough that the children that live here commit are violence, drugs and motoring offences, which, again, for those of us involved in community safety, isn't much of a surprise. Our Youth Justice Services has strong governance arrangements around it that are informed all the way from our children with our Youth Justice Forum, all the way up to the Deputy Mayor and Director of Children's Social Care. We have to make sure our team are involved in our governance arrangements to make sure that we have that feedback from everyone at all angles so we have to ensure that our strategy captures everyone's opinions. In the last two years, our strategic priorities have been quite clear. Child first, ensuring that children are at the centre of every aspect of the Youth Justice Partnership, ensuring our practice is consistently good and developing our health and our education offer. In relation to child first, as Deputy Mayor said, 95% of the team have completed the UNITAS Child First Award. To put it into context, this piece of training was only created about 18 months ago, so the fact that we've managed to get 95% of the staff, including myself, fully trained on it is quite an achievement. We've also changed the quality lead for child first accommodation from Youth Justice Incend Award, which is an upgrade for the initial award that we received about three years ago, and we've developed our Youth Justice Participation Forum. In relation to consistently good practice, every external auditor that we've had states that we are running a solid service, but there are always areas for improvement, which we appreciate taking on. We've developed a comprehensive training package, as DM said, we've got a quality assurance framework that's been highlighted as best practice, and we've also introduced Metabase and e-forms for our staff to allow them to get key access to data quickly. In relation to health, we've recruited Youth Justice Health and introduced our Health MDT. We've committed further funding for speech and language therapists in the service, and we've had funds and agreed for gym memberships for our children in Youth Justice Service, and we've consulted with our children recently in accessing, in their access and their ability to access dentistry. In relation to education, over 95% of our children have a placement of school age. We've commissioned WIPER's CIC for a social enterprise programme, recognising that some of our older children, 16 to 18, don't want to be, or struggle to be in a college and a formalised school placement, so we're hoping to develop their own personal business skills so they can develop their own business programmes and achieve their own money. We now have all of our group work and reparation projects, AQA accredited, and actually today we've just linked in with Young Tower Hamlets Development and the offer of Duke Fedenborough Award within the Youth Justice Service, recruited new virtual schools officer, and we have a monthly meeting where we look at all of our children that are not in education, training or employment across the board to see if there's any additional work that we can do with them. But our main key priorities, we look at our key performance indicators, which is what we look at, which is what we provide to the Cabinet as well for the strategic updates, are our first-time entrants to those children that previously did not have a criminal record. I don't have to explain to any of you how damaging a criminal record can be for anyone, especially the younger you get one, the more damaging, the more impactful that is on your life achievements. Since 2021-22, we have reduced our first-time entrants by 41%. That is 41% less children year on year who receive a criminal record, which is an incredible achievement for the service. This, in numbers of children, has gone from 75 children down to approximately 42, and already this year, with one quarter left, we believe we might even be able to reduce that even further. So, which is an incredible achievement. What that means is that we now, having been one of the highest in our statistical family and above the London rate, we are now continuing to be low in not only the London rate but the national England and Wales rate and one of the lowest in our statistical family. The last time we looked in our statistical family, the only borough that was doing better on FTE outcomes than us was Kensington and Chelsea, which I think shows the impact that we've had in this area of work. In relation to re-offending, our re-offending rates have gone up. Our re-offending rate on paper. We've done key pieces of research in relation to the children that have re-offended. All of those children in the last five years are boys. The rare age of their first time, becoming a first-time entrant, it's 14, 15, and 45% of the children that re-offended committed one or two further offences, whereas 55% committed three or more. 54% of this cohort have been a victim of crime outside the family home and 60% had experienced domestic violence. 60% of those children have been assessed by the Youth Justice having speech and language needs and 88% of children at some point in their life had been known to children's social care and 88% of children had experienced at least one managed move in their educational history and 73% had received one suspension or a permanent exclusion. This is a real significant cohort of children who have had every single negative life outcome and that's why, you know, that's part of the reason that the re-offending to tackle it is so difficult. However, it does look like our re-offending rate has increased but because of what the incredible work we've done in the FTE rates, we are punished by maths, basically, and that is my excuse. So the number in the cohort originally was 153 and when you look at the 19-20 cohort with 39 of those children that re-offended. In the most recent cohort, the cohort was reduced to 95 children, so a reduction of nearly a third and yet we have still managed to reduce the number of re-offenders from 39 down to 34. So even though it has increased on percentage-wise from 25.5% to 35.8%, the number of children, the number of individual children that have re-offended continues to reduce which again, considering that cohort of children and the most likely childhood, adverse childhood experience they've demonstrated, they've experienced, shows that we are still doing really strong work in there. In relation to custody, our custody rates continue to be low. We have an aspiration that we want no children in custody. Custody is a dangerous place for children. If you look at any HMIP reports, BBC News, any media reports about the experiences of children in Felton, Warrington, all of those experiences are negative, they are violent, horrible places to live and we fight for every single child to try and keep them out of custody where it is appropriate. We know some offences, custody is inevitable but for all of those other children we continue to fight and develop to create effective bowel packages in their community with their family that will support them to get better and positive outcomes. Now, I will take questions. We are in an inspection year. We do believe we're going to get inspected in the next 12 months. We hope we are in a good place. We believe we're in a good place but we always appreciate there is still work to do. Thank you, Kevin. Okay, anyone else? Please, Syed, and I'll bring Kobirin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Mayor. And thanks to the officers for the report and thanks to the lead member and Steve for this. I think it's a positive report from where we were last year. It was very poor. It was very alarming. It was year 22. Yeah, it was very... We inherited them, in fact. And the first year, I remember, in one of our cabinet meetings, it was very alarming. And I remember the discussion weren't at this level. And I can see the progress happening year on year. And as you say, here so far, where we are one of the lowest, not just within our cohort, but nationally, I think that's a great achievement. It's a shame that re-offending is, as you say, has gone up. But you say that it has its own reasons behind it. I just want to understand how are we looking to mitigate that directly and what measures are we putting in place to support the re-offending issues? Thank you. Just to clarify, the number of children re-offending has reduced. It's just the figure that we have to report back to the strategic priorities looks like it's increased. So it's just because of the way the... Because our cohort of children... You have to become a first-time entrant before you can re-offend. So because we've reduced the first-time entrant the number of children to choose to select from that cohort has been significantly reduced. So even though it looks like it's increased statistically, on an individual child-by-child basis it continues to reduce. We are doing pretty much whatever we can. So we have different opportunities for children. We've just linked in with Timpsons as well as Redemption Roasters. Public, people are looking in. Just explain that. Explain that contradiction if you can. Just in ordinary terms that people can understand. And it is complicated. If we go before the ONS and it comes to us it's Red. I know Steve tries to talk us out of it and be, you know, why. But just for the ordinary folks out there just explain it to us in simple language. So when a child first commits an offence and goes to court and gets a criminal record they become one of the group that we can select from. You have to become a first-time entrant first before you become a re-offender. Because from the slide before and I will show because that number has reduced by 41% there are less children which is good news to become a re-offender because there's less children in the original group. So from that original group of first-time entrants which is getting smaller and smaller every year which is a good thing. So out of that group it's then how many of those children commit further offences go out and commit another offence go back to court and be convicted at court. So it's not just about children being arrested it's convicted and that's why there's a delay in the data because to be arrested to be charged to be convicted takes a period of time. So the re-offending rate looks like it's gone up but if you look at the bottom chart on the table on the slide that I'm showing now it shows originally we had 153 children in that cohort 39 of them committed another offence. That came out as 25.5% re-offending rate. So one in four. In the most recent cohort we have that number has reduced from 153 to 95 because of the number of children the lack of the lesser children coming in. The number of children that went on to re-offend that committed further offence reduced from 39 to 34 but because it's a bigger percentage of the original group the percentage rate has gone up. No thank you it's important people to understand we're doing kids are doing well you know they're doing very well but because it's a smaller pool of people that are doing well and because of that number that re-offend it just screws the figure you know. Can we have a look at that indicator please? Can I ask you? It's a national indicator Is it a national indicator? Is it? Okay. Or we can supplement it with our local measure which is Kelly said the number of children we're offending rather than the percentage of children. Yeah. In reality children are doing well we're doing well as a council unfortunately because it's that small pool the percentage basically yeah province are you okay? You understood that? Okay. Thanks Kelly. Please copy. Thank you Mr Mayor. I think this is like the third or the fourth time through various bodies so let me start off by thanking Kelly Susanna Steve and Deputy Mayor for the work done on this. I think it's really important for us to draw context of what the situation is out there for our children. as you know I work in substance misuse on a professional level and about ten years ago there was a documentary called County Lines and prior to that the whole country seemed to be oblivious to how children can be caught up as drug mules going across from one area to another because the drug dealers knew they would get a lighter sentence or get away with it if caught by the police and that then leads to things like grooming and it can be as basic as somebody buying a young child chicken and chips in a chip shop or a fast food shop so it is an extremely important area where professionals can intervene to change the life chances and direction of a young person that finds themselves in a cycle of crime just because of circumstances because they haven't had the life chances because maybe they grew up in care or they had parents who neglected them or they wanted and we all want stuff but there's ways where we earn stuff and get rewards such as employment and other things and there's ways of small things that a child is motivated by so the work that's done is really important and it's that work that directly impacts on the quality so thank you very much for the hard work you're doing thank you thanks Coby thank you very much please Susan and that's a really important point about exploitation we work really closely with our exploitation service and children's social care because over half of these children are open to children's social care we look holistically at their family and their community as well and work not just on an individual level with that child but looking at their networks working with the police where there is exploitation as well and with community safety and other relevant people and I think it's really important being able to use things like the national referral mechanism for those children that have been exploited to then again support us in being able to explain a child's life experience through the courts and through the police to prevent again hopefully preventing re-offending hopefully preventing them getting becoming a first time mentor and getting that because the minute you get that criminal record it's so much life becomes more difficult to get into college to get a job to become what we want or want our children to become Thank you Tala Thank you Mayor and thank you Kelly Susanna Steve lead member I've also had the opportunity to see this a few times with my community safety hat on and I think honestly it's great work that the team have done to reduce first time entrance by 41% and for me when you talk about a criminal conviction being something so significant in someone's life I think 5.14 of this report where you're talking about diversion is really important so the fact that we've tried outcome 22 in Tower Hamlets I think is a welcome thing and schemes like that I think will help hopefully young people avoid the criminal justice system and hopefully turn things around at the same time I think 3.29 we talk about post-16 neat offerings I think that's an area that I'm quite keen to collaborate on it's an area that I think if we can offer the right opportunities for young people enough divergent enough positive opportunities I do think people genuinely can turn their life around despite everything going against them growing up so I welcome the report and thank you all for your hard work thank you Mr Mayor firstly Susanna and Kelly thank you also Steve and not forgetting lead member for your hard work I think what we've inherited and the improvement to see the improvements that's happening is really reassuring a couple of questions in terms of you said you've recruited speech and language therapists how many have you recruited that's firstly secondly in terms of the youngsters using the Be Well services in terms of membership how many membership and how is that being funded and finally in terms of comparison I think it's really good to compare in terms of seeing and comparing ourselves with other boroughs the rates have gone up in terms of comparing that with other boroughs and nationally how are we looking going forward thank you I'll tackle the two easy ones first so in relation to the Be Well we have 25 memberships that I fund through my poor budget so we had a little bit of money we've currently got 20 children using them and then what we've also done because as well as the children that commit the offences we also have a strong part of the team's offer is to the victims of those offences as well so the victims of those crimes and we've actually got two children who have previously been victims of our cohort children who are also using those because what we also know is as well as being able to support victims through it young victims become my first time entrants in two three years time so again trying to help we're trying to develop our victim offer more to develop children's resilience if they become a victim of crime younger so actually they don't that becomes something they can grow from rather than something that becomes a negative life consequence for them in relation to the speech and language offer we currently have a contract with Homerton which was roughly for 0.7 0.7 member of staff over the week that was split across two members of staff so it worked out to be two days for two members of staff one day each so we've doubled that more or less that again was through some underspend so these are short term measures because at the minute our budget doesn't stretch to the way we want it to we also had some additional funding from Ministry of Justice through the turnaround which we use with that as well and again that ends in March this year so these are things that we've got we're trying to see if they work see if we can request further funding you know the rates going up how are we compared with other boroughs and nationally re-offending rate so re-offending rates are a bit odd because the whole re-offending the scoring is odd as you've just seen from that simple thing so other boroughs re-offending rate usually dips up and down approximately by 2 or 3% kind of either which way however there is no one in London that has reduced their first time entrance by 40% no one so we are unique in that sense other people might have reduced it by 2 3 4 5 then they might have an influx and it increases by 10% we have year on year come down and what we have done other youth justice services are calling me and saying how have you done that and there's lots of things which and this isn't the space so we are unique in that context what I would also like to put is a national picture first time entrants are going up across the board reoffending rates are increasing across the board so we are bucking the trend with our first time entrants but again and when we spoke and for those of you I know a lot of you have heard me speak numerous times two years ago when we said we're bringing our first time entrants down you need to be prepared because the reoffending rate is going to go up because we knew the mass would muck us up but it is something that we are bucking the national trend for first time entrants the reoffending rates as long as the individuals keep coming down I'm less worried about what the percentage shows and again when we are scrutinised and I have quarterly meetings with the youth justice board from central government about our figures and about our data they understand that our reoffending rate looks bad on paper 35% isn't great I'm not going to say it looks great as a number but they understand the mass and the data and the science behind it and we can show our individual children are thank you anyone else nope okay thank you for coming thank you for the report and giving us an update continue the good work and look forward to the inspection certainly and I think we've crossed a good hurdle of the investment the work that's gone in and the board so thank you so can we note the report is it okay thank you now move on to another note report a good one again the work that's going in into highways and the money that we invest in highways good okay 5.3 councillor shafi thank you mr mayor good evening everybody this is a year to date the highway services who have done a great work and have delivered and supported more than the total investment for this is in access of 10 million pound again a visionary budget these include schemes to provide safe crossing points improvement for pedestrians when walking in the borough more residents and business parking supporting the council greening projects for example planting more trees the report provides a summary of the delivery of highways capital projects in 2024 with key achievements to date I'd like to hand over to Ashraf Ali for further comment thank you thank you council Shafi and Mr Mayor nothing further to add you both already echoed but what I would start to mention I've got Vincent Valerio and his team tremendously working on those projects for delivery and I've mentioned more than 28 projects to this date has been delivered this is following from if you remember Mr Mayor in the summer when we did the walk about I was initially told we were going for two hours side he ended up five hours walking about with Shafi and and and listening listening listening to the residents listening to businesses of their needs and issues and as a result listening exercise with the residents and the businesses in the area when we did the walk about this is the delivery this is the result of listening to people and thank you for some of the funding that came through and what we were able to achieve this is just some of the achievement we did in short space of time there's a lot more to come and like you say this is just for noting for the report and we will actually deliver more on the priorities that you've set for the borough so Vincent can add a few more evening Mr. Mayor evening Cabinet so thank you as we know the highways is our most visible and largest asset your children our children walk use the footways they use the roads to get to school our businesses use it as their lifeblood for their economy and I can look around here and I'm sure that inquiries land in your inbox relating to potholes and parking however the highway service is not just about potholes and parking and I'll just give you a whistle stop tour on some of the key achievements that we've had in the last year with the support of the mayor's office and the public realm so the highway service comprises of four groups and the highway maintenance team this year alone have constructed 26 footway reconstruction schemes 30 carriageway reservicing programs a section 19 report to deliver on local flood authority works and also essential improvements to Watney market that's just to name some of the business as usual our transportation group are working in partnership with the London legacy development corporation unlocking almost two million pounds of investment in Bromley by Bo we're also working with partners internally and externally to ensure that we can underpin good growth contribute to a cleaner and greener future and also working with our regeneration colleagues to ensure that we can deliver on the Whitechapel Road improvement as well our network management team are introducing measures to facilitate construction management plans which ensure that development throughout the borough is not going to be onerous on our residents and ensures that it keeps the borough moving and finally our design and delivery team they have unlocked almost 1.2 million in section 106 funding to work on 10 section 106 developments throughout the council we recognise that some of this might sound business as usual but the thing that is at our core is ensuring that we are working collaboratively having a delivery focused mantra in delivering interventions for your communities and our communities and ensuring that our track record of delivery is sustained and ensuring that the job isn't done we need to make sure that we continue delivering good high quality interventions along our highways network and I'm pleased to say that as we look into the future we'll be looking at introducing electric vehicle charging points for our residents we'll be hopefully by the end of March we'll be launching the Keeping the Borough Moving Forum which was part of the Mayor's manifesto and as part of that Keeping the Borough Moving Forum that will make sure that we're working with key partners across the council including our corporate delivery teams and etc and that's exciting we also want to make sure that we're not forgetting about our aspirations to ensure that there's a cleaner and greener future so we will be working collaboratively with our colleagues in the greening team and also ensuring that we're achieving our directives in terms of highways any questions? Thank you, thank you and I'm grateful to Ashraf you and Simon and we see the change over the last one and a half, one year that you and your team have introduced when it comes to our roads, our pavements, safety and security and the nicest it is of our roads and highways, it's very important and the 50 schemes that you've listed you know, many of them that we spoke to and you have delivered so we're very grateful to you and the pace at which you have delivered them you've accelerated the work we put the money in but you have really accelerated the work and we're truly grateful for the work that the effort that you have put in you know, making our roads safe, secure look nice to people who live in the borough and people who visit our borough is so important and people who drive through the borough is so important so I am indeed grateful can I invite, please, Councillor Kobir Thank you, Mayor I think it's important, again, to acknowledge that place shaping and greening of public realm doesn't only have a physical impact I want to focus here on the emotional impact it provides and the attachment of residents taking pride in their locality so I'm going to draw on a story and I've got consent from one of my residents for this and Ashraf will be aware of it so when I won the by-election in August 2021 there was a number of residents who came to me asking for tree planting in my ward and it took me two long years in order to get offices and budgets ready in order to do this but where the emotional attachment comes is that what these residents have done is during COVID a number of our elderly residents passed away and they've named those trees in their locality after those residents who passed away and since the council put in the trees they've gone off and have ordered plaques themselves in order to put around the trees in memory of those residents who spent years living in those localities and in particular I want to give a big special thanks to Wendy Harding outside her front door there's a tree and it's named after her mother and her father Sandy and Fred Harding so it does have an emotional impact on residents and a great sense of pride in their locality can I just ask you know we have a manifesto commitment to deliver 1,000 car spaces additional car spaces where are we with that I know you gave me a figure where are we with that in terms of the figure Mr Mayor we're hovering around 800 so we are accelerating excuse me the programme to this year to 25 so hopefully we'll be actually completing to 1,000 pretty much by probably summer this year a few more one or two more would be quite good rather than just an exact 1,000 please yeah is that okay okay and can I ask you now coming back on a serious note thanks for that thank you coming back to Corby's point you know it's not only the green agenda but obviously we want our children and grandchildren to understand the green agenda but also trees play a very important role not only it looks nice but the but the oxygen and the ability to absorb carbon and carbon dioxide is so important how many trees have you have we grown planted so far and how do you determine where the trees go and I see it visibly on the street it looks very nice what you've done but I just want to understand what the methodology is we delivered over 1,400 trees to date and these are planted 1,400 across the borough on public highway these are sort of goes through a process of assessing the location so obviously ensuring that the footways are sufficient enough to accommodate it's maintainable it's accessible not obstructing the footway where we put on carriageway we ensure you know this space is redundant space where we can actually make the road space a bit more nice and tidy so these are the process that goes through to deliver planting trees so we have got future programmes as well to deliver trees so to answer your question it's over 1,400 trees being planted thank you I see Andrews is here can we look at a comms strategy please there are things we're doing on the ground and we're going to do in this budget too going forward but we need to celebrate this people need to understand no no we're doing this we've got limited parks and spaces in the borough but we can make use of the whole borough in terms of you know a green a green agenda let's celebrate that and build some awareness can we look at a date and a diary please how we do that so okay Mayim thank you thank you Mr Mayor I just want to add echo what our colleague said I would like to thank our officers lead members lead member you know from the I Live Dogs point of view I mean we've got zebra crosses and some safety measures on Westbury Eastbury Marshall and hopefully we're looking forward to some future further works in Manchester Road so I'm grateful to the Mayor for a grid and also the lead member and our officers so I would like to put that on record in case the Mayor changes his mind thank you Councillor Galtz you're here you've been kindly sitting in our cabinet thank you I should have asked to invite you whether you wanted to ask any question or make any comments please feel free very quickly I'm very pleased to hear the prospect of some road improvements on the Isle of Dogs we've waited we've waited a long time for this and I'm sure it'd be much appreciated across the island thank you thank you we don't want to take that away the budget hopefully will be allocated and much needed work can continue so can we once again thank you thank you for coming and the lead member to note the report thank you grateful to you there is no other business can we conclude the meeting for today until next time thank you and best wishes case I see you and I I I I I I