To receive a verbal report from the Leader, Councillor Claire Kober, setting out the Council’s priorities for the municipal year.
Minutes:
The Chair welcomed the Leader of the Council, Councillor Claire Kober, and Deputy Chief Executive, Zina Etheridge who outlined the most pertinent priorities for the year ahead from the Council’s Corporate Plan 2015-18, which can be found using the link below:
Haringey Corporate Plan 2015-18
REPORTED that, in addition to further budget cuts,
a. the Council’s regeneration aspirations were as important as ever as challenges with housing supply and sufficiency continued and there were more than 3,000 households in temporary accommodation in Haringey. The Council had successfully won a Housing Zone bid for £40m in Tottenham Hale and was preparing a further bid for Housing Zone funding in Northumberland Park and other areas in Wood Green;
b. the Post 16 and the skills agenda were concerning as cuts to adult learning budgets would mean a shorter supply of courses;
c. Birkbeck College would be providing higher education courses in Haringey from September. There were ongoing discussions with the new National College for Digital Skills about locating in the Borough and plans for a commission of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subject experts to work with schools to encourage take up of these subjects;
d. the early intervention and prevention agenda continued to be a focus and looked after children numbers were lower than had been in recent years;
e. a key area in environment was flytipping in parts of the Borough and the Council was working towards understanding the issues behind flytipping and taking action. In response to questioning, the Council was thinking of ways to demonstrate how tax payers bear the cost of flytipping, and, CCTV footage had enabled some enforcement;
f. adults services and the health and social care integration agenda was a large piece of work for the current year with new public health responsibilities including implementation of the universal healthy child programme.
NOTED, in response, to questions and comments from the Committee in the following areas, that:
g. the Council used various licensing schemes to improve the quality of the private rented sector, learning from other councils, and court action against private landlords where necessary. Building new council stock would take time as a result of funding cuts but in relation to new private builds, planning officers and the planning committee pushed for quality from developers.
The Council held its arms length organisations, such as Homes for Haringey, to account on performance. Examples were with repairs, which had seen significant improvements and Veolia, who had been served with financial penalties for not meeting contractual requirements. The Council was working on building staff resources to manage contracts as well as commissioning;
h. City and Islington College was the main destination for students who moved out of borough for Post 16 provision. This was not understood to be for reasons of lack of provision or quality although reasons could include: the perceived reputation of Haringey institutions, difference of landscape, ability to exercise choice and whether or not young people received the right pathway advice. Work was being done across the system including earlier pathway conversations with young people. In response to concerns raised about Haringey’s lack of Sixth Form provision the Committee was reminded of the Sixth Form Centre in Tottenham and the new Harris Free School which would provide a Sixth Form;
i. further budget cuts, included a potential reduction in the public health grant and some preparation work had been conducted to understand how Haringey might be affected (between £1m and £3m) but it was difficult to anticipate and the Council might need to move quickly to react to in-year cuts;
j. in response to concerns about unpaid debt, the Leader recognised the financial difficulties individual residents faced but noted the increasing importance of Council Tax as a funding stream for the Council and a balanced approach was applied in recovering unpaid debts;
k. creating a good customer service experience was a priority to ensure resolutions were provided quickly to avoid further inefficiencies and costs. This included: front line staff being given the skills to deal with issues directly, clearer routes for queries and more online information with opportunities to also conduct transactions and applications online;
l. when questioned on the image of the Council the Leader emphasised that the Council’s achievements would speak for themselves. The Deputy Chief Executive added that Haringey’s reputation in education had risen (citing the Borough as having the most improved GCSE results) and there had been an increase in high calibre professionals such as social care staff applying for jobs with the Council;
m. the Leader agreed with comments that looked after children and hearing the voice of the child should be included in the Council’s priorities and areas such as using the wider family network and adoption rates had improved;
n. in response to questioning on education provision for the new St Ann’s site and Lawrence Road developments it was explained that planners and education teams worked closely together to ensure that there was sufficient provision and conditions placed on developments to ensure developers made financial contributions to education.
The Leader voiced concern that local authorities had the duty to provide school places but did not have the power to open new schools.
Post Meeting Update
Both those developments are on the housing trajectory which form part of the evidence that the GLA considers in providing the Council’s projections. The areas around both those developments show a longer term shortfall in places as a result of the development being rolled out over the next few years and we will respond to this in our place planning. In the short term there is ample capacity in some of the local academies;
o. a member requested an explanation of the following comment on page 23 of the corporate plan ‘There will be more inward investment for the community and voluntary sector’ and particularly where the investment was expected to come from.
It was explained that having the right partners to build capacity across the sectors and continually working to ensuring a diverse market was key...
Further response to be provided post meeting
Action: Deputy Chief Executive
p. Other areas discussed included:
· Ways the Council would celebrate 50 years since being founded
· School place planning, which would be reported to Cabinet in July
· Lessons learnt from the Rotherham Child Exploitation review and scrutiny’s role (to be presented to the Committee in July)
· Work being done to reduce skills gaps and long term unemployment and encourage apprenticeships;
q. the Leader closed by concluding that key challenges were:
· the housing crisis, regeneration challenges and the possible forced sale of council homes in the future;
· further welfare cuts which will affect Haringey households and impact on children;
· budgetary issues and the continued austerity methods;
and, that key opportunities included the potential for greater devolution to local governments.
The Committee thanked the Leader and the Deputy Chief Executive for attending.
Clerk’s note: the Leader and the Deputy Chief Executive left the meeting at 19:30hrs.