Agenda and draft minutes

Please note that this meeting may be filmed or recorded by the Council for live or subsequent broadcast via the Council’s internet site or by anyone attending the meeting using any communication method. Although we ask members of the public recording, filming or reporting on the meeting not to include the public seating areas, members of the public attending the meeting should be aware that we cannot guarantee that they will not be filmed or recorded by others attending the meeting. Members of the public participating in the meeting (e.g. making deputations, asking questions, making oral protests) should be aware that they are likely to be filmed, recorded or reported on. 

By entering the meeting room and using the public seating area, you are consenting to being filmed and to the possible use of those images and sound recordings.

The chair of the meeting has the discretion to terminate or suspend filming or recording, if in his or her opinion continuation of the filming, recording or reporting would disrupt or prejudice the proceedings, infringe the rights of any individual or may lead to the breach of a legal obligation by the Council.

The Chair referred Members present to agenda Item 1 as shown on the agenda in respect of filming at this meeting, and Members noted the information contained therein’.

Apologies for lateness were received from Cllr Iyngkaran.

A Member with a disclosable pecuniary interest or a prejudicial interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is considered:

(i) must disclose the interest at the start of the meeting or when the interest

becomes apparent, and

(ii) may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter and must withdraw from the meeting room.

A member who discloses at a meeting a disclosable pecuniary interest which is not registered in the Members’ Register of Interests or the subject of a pending notification must notify the Monitoring Officer of the interest within 28 days of the disclosure.

Disclosable pecuniary interests, personal interests and prejudicial interest are

defined at Paragraphs 5-7 and Appendix A of the Members’ Code of Conduct.

Cllr Pippa Connor declared an interest by virtue of her membership of the Royal College of Nursing.

Cllr Pippa Connor declared an interest by virtue of her sister working as a GP in Tottenham.

To consider any requests received in accordance with Part 4, Section B, Paragraph 29 of the Council’s Constitution.

None.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting.

Cllr Opoku requested a correction to her declaration of interest from the previous meeting. She had placed on record that she worked closely with the NWL ICB (North West London Integrated Care Board) but this had been incorrectly recorded as NCL ICB (North Central London Integrated Care Board).

Following this amendment, the minutes of the previous meeting were approved as an accurate record.

RESOLVED – That the amended minutes of the meeting held on 16^th December 2025 be approved as an accurate record.

The Chair will consider the admission of any late items of urgent business (late items will be considered under the agenda item where they appear. New items will be dealt with as noted below).

Cllr Connor explained that this urgent question was being raised by the Panel following a meeting the previous week with members of the Joint Partnership Board (JPB). At this meeting, concerns were heard from several people about the difficulties in making safeguarding referrals. An example given was an organisation trying to call the relevant numbers but not being able to get through to anyone, then filling out the online referral form but not having received a response over a week later.

The Panel’s main concerns were:

• No one answering the Safeguarding phone line.
• If a call was put through, no information provided as to when they would hear back regarding their concerns.
• If they filled out the safeguarding form, there was no recognition from the service that this had been received.
• Long waits to hear if the referral had been accepted.
• No way of finding out who to contact if they didn’t hear anything once the form had been submitted.
• No reference number that they could use in a follow up email to track what was happening.
• When contact from the Council was made, no timeframe for when any next steps would happen.

The Panel was therefore keen to understand more about how the process currently operates and are particularly keen to ensure that, once a referral is made, the person who has submitted it should always receive details including a reference number, how long they should expect to wait for a response and how to get in touch if a response was not received within that timeframe.

In response to the concerns raised, Cllr das Neves, Cabinet Member for Social Care & Wellbeing, commented that these concerns were difficult to hear but not taken lightly and did validate the issues that had been previously identified and included in the Improvement Plan.

Jo Baty, Director of Adult Social Care made a number of observations about safeguarding referrals:

• Safeguarding referrals into Adult Social Care were received through ‘front door’ arrangements, the purpose of which was provide a single consistent route into the service. There was no separate, direct safeguarding telephone line. Safeguarding referrals could be made by telephone, an online form or written correspondence from partner agencies. When safeguarding referrals were received, the focus was on consistent triage and having a clear recording and audit.
• It was recognised that callers may experience difficulties in getting through by telephone at peak time. Callers are then queued, directed through callback arrangements or provided with information about how to access information through the website.
• It was also recognised that, while online referrals were screened and processed internally, the visibility of how this was being progressed could be improved.
• Demand was a big issue and was therefore a cornerstone of the Improvement Plan and the work of the independent safeguarding review that had been commissioned to look at the role and function of the Safeguarding Board and how the Council performed its statutory duties.
• A Strategic Programme Lead for Safeguarding had been appointed to manage the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 52.

To receive an analysis report from the Metropolitan Police (North Area BCU)  and to scrutinise crime data to understand group-based child sexual abuse offending in Haringey Borough. This follows recent discussions on safeguarding at two recent Scrutiny Panel meetings:

• Children & Young People’s Scrutiny Panel (18th Nov 2025) – Item on the Haringey Safeguarding Children Partnership (HSCP) Annual Report 2024-25
• Adults & Health Scrutiny Panel (16th Dec 2025) – Item on the Haringey Safeguarding Adults Board (HSAB) Annual Report 2024-25. Queries are relevant to the areas of Panel’s remit to scrutinise issues relating to safeguarding vulnerable adults, transitions (14-25) and Violence Against Women & Girls (VAWG).

Report to follow.

Cllr Connor explaining that this item had been scheduled to discuss safeguarding issues arising from recent discussions at meetings of the Adults & Health Scrutiny Panel and the Children & Young People’s Scrutiny Panel. The Panel had requested a crime data analysis report from the Metropolitan Police North Area BCU. However, Cllr Connor reported that she had received a message from the Metropolitan Police stating that they would not be able to attend the meeting. She had responded to express her disappointment at this as it was difficult for the Panel to understand how Council services should respond without the information requested. Cllr Connor explained that she had spoken to the chair of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee and it had been agreed that this item could be added instead to the Overview & Scrutiny Committee’s agenda in March. (ACTION)

Cllr Makbule Gunes, Chair of the Culture, Community Safety and Environment Scrutiny Panel and Helena Kania also expressed their disappointment at the postponement of this item. Cllr Mason added that a lot of the information requested was already in the public domain and so it should not have been a problem for the Metropolitan Police to provide this data. Cllr O’Donovan commented that the Metropolitan Police were re-examining up to 9,000 historic cases of abuse across London but the criteria for this were broad-based and not necessarily under the definition of grooming gangs. He suggested that it would be helpful to receive data on how many of these cases related to Haringey. (ACTION)

To provide details of recent quality assurance activity carried out in Haringey.

Report to follow

The report for this item was presented by Richmond Kessie, Commissioning & Quality Assurance Officer. The report outlined the quality assurance activities across Haringey’s adult social care provider market to safeguard quality, support improvement and ensure that residents received safe and person-centred care. Richmond Kessie highlighted some key points:

• The past year had continued to be challenging for care providers with inflation and rising workforce costs, placing pressure on service sustainability. The Council had mitigated these pressures as far as possible through the annual inflation uplift.
• Engagement with the market had been strengthened, including through well-attended monthly provider forums which provided an important space for open dialogue, shared learning and early identification of risk.
• Over the period covered by the report, the Council had commissioned care from more than 220 CQC-registered providers, both in-Borough and out of Borough, and had supported over 5,300 residents.
• Market shifts had included an increase in out-of-Borough placements and a rise in unrated providers. The Council’s policy of avoiding new placements with unrated providers remained in place.
• The quality assurance team continued to play a critical role in identifying and supporting providers requiring intervention. This included those with declining CQC ratings, safeguarding concerns or operational risks. Several providers had been supported to make measurable improvements through welfare checks, improvement plans and joint working with the CQC.
• The quality assurance and contract management framework had been embedded across adult social care and this strengthened governance, risk oversight and coordination between commissioning, safeguarding and contract management functions. 

Andreas Schwarz, Operation Manager, North West & North Central London ASC Team 2 and Muhammed Koodoruth, Adult Social Care Inspector, both from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) then presented slides to the Panel which included the following details:

• In terms of CQC ratings, services in Haringey had better overall ratings when compared to the London and national averages.
• The CQC had committed to completing 9,000 assessments by the end of September 2026 and to recruit more registration inspectors.
• Current CQC priorities included responding quickly to emerging risk, examining services which had not previously been assessed, had not been assessed for a long time or were flagged as being high risk.
• Long-term plans for improvement included the redesign of the entire regulatory process. This included the use of new technology and looking at how AI could be utilised to speed up the assessment process. The online portal had been improved to make it easier for providers to communicate with the CQC.

The Council and CQC officers then responded to questions from the Panel:

• Asked by Cllr Brennan about the high number of care providers that had not been inspected, Andreas Schwarz responded that this was a national issue with a similar proportion of providers being uninspected in other similar Boroughs. Cllr Mason queried how a service could be opened without being rated. Andreas Schwarz explained that, once a service was registered, it could provide a regulated activity and take on service users. However, this would often be for private service users because local  ...  view the full minutes text for item 54.

To consider the Budget report on the Council’s financial position at the end of Quarter 2 of 2025/26.

The report included with this item was first published as part of the agenda papers for the Cabinet meeting on 9th December 2025.

Members are required only to scrutinise the areas of the report related to the Panel’s remit, including Adult Social Care and Public Health.

Rachel Boston, Finance Manager, introduced the report which set out the Council’s in-year financial position at the end of Quarter 2 for 2025/26 and included the following key points:

• A favourable movement was reported at Q2 compared to Q1.
• Work had been ongoing with the services to review budgets and it had been possible to identify £1.8m of income that had not been fully accounted for.
• Services for older people had stabilised and the average unit cost was decreasing.
• However, there was growth in services for the 18-64 age group, predominantly within mental health and physical disability. The Council had been working closely with the local NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB) and there was now a better contribution for packages of care from the ICB.

Responses were then provided to questions from the Panel:

• Cllr Opoku commented that the 18-64 age group was broad and that it would be helpful to see a more detailed breakdown to understand which age groups were most impacted. Rachel Boston clarified that a lot of younger people under 35 requiring mental health support were coming through the system, whereas with cases involving physical health this tended to be from people above the age of 50.
• Referring to paragraph 1.2 of the report, Cllr Connor noted that the outturn variance for the General Fund was £23.4m which represented an improvement of £10.7m. She queried whether further improvements could be expected later in the year. Rachel Boston confirmed that further improvements were expected because of factors such as the ICB contributions. It would be necessary to recast the Council’s demand modelling and pressures for next year to establish a clear position for the budget going forward.
• Cllr Iyngkaran asked whether the trends in demand for services, such as growth in the 18-64 age bracket could be expected to continue in future years. Sara Sutton commented that it was very difficult to make predictions for demand-led services and that there were many variables to build into the modelling assumptions. The team was working on three different scenarios with detailed analysis to improve modelling and forecasting. However, she added that the position was much improved compared to last year which had a considerably higher overspend position.
• Referring to Table 2 in the report, Cllr Connor noted that the total variance for Quarter 1 for Adult Social Services was around £7.5m and that the movement from Q1 to Q2 was £1.8m, resulting in a variance at Q2 of £5.7m. Rachel Boston explained that the £5.7m was expected to reduce further later in the year due to the formal agreement with the ICB over joint funding arrangements.
• Cllr Mason referred to paragraph 1.2 of the report which stated that there was a forecast overspend of £23.4m in 2025/26 with an additional £37m of budgeted spend from Exceptional Financial Support (EFS). She expressed concern about the likely difficulties with the Budget in 2026/27, including the repayment of funds already borrowed from the Government. Sara Sutton said that the draft Budget report  ...  view the full minutes text for item 55.

Meeting dates for 2026/27 TBC.

Cllr Connor advised the Panel that the Scrutiny Review report on discharge from hospital would be approved by the Overview & Scrutiny Committee shortly and was expected to be presented to the Cabinet before the pre-election period. The Scrutiny Review report on communications and adult social care was also nearing completion and was expected to be finished before the pre-election period, although the presentation to Cabinet was not likely to happen until the new administration was in place.

Cllr Connor also advised that dates would be explored for a joint meeting of the Adults & Health and the Children & Young People Scrutiny Panels and that any updates to the Panel’s action tracker would be circulated by email.

As this was her last Adults & Health Scrutiny Panel meeting, Cllr Connor also placed on record her thanks to the Panel members and officers and said that it had been a privilege to serve as the Chair of the Panel.