Agenda and draft minutes

1.1  Apologies had been received from:

-  Cllr Hayhurst

-  Cllr Munn

-  Cllr Patrick

2.1  There were no urgent items and the order of business was as laid out. 

3.1  There were no declarations of interest.

4.1  The Minutes of the meeting of the 14^th October 2015 were agreed as an accurate record.

4.2  The follow up actions were noted.

5.1  The Chair thanked the following guests who were in attendance for this item:

·  Mayor Jules Pipe

·  Tim Shields, Chief Executive, Hackney Council

·  Ian Williams, Corporate Director, Finance and Resources, Hackney Council

5.2  The Chair advised that a range of questions had been provided in advance. He invited the Mayor to give any opening statement before setting out responses to the pre-asked questions.

5.3  The Mayor noted that the majority of questions were related to housing, and temporary accommodation in particular. As an opening point, he said that he was pleased that the Council had responded to the growing demand for temporary accommodation units with the purchasing of more of its own units, based within the borough. It was a priority to support families to remain in Hackney when they wanted to wherever possible. Some other London councils were following approaches of placing families outside of their boroughs.

5.4  This said, there was an ongoing and increasing financial and availability challenge around temporary accommodation. Despite the purchasing of new units, the Council still needed to rely heavily on the private sector. Rents for these units were rising, while further revisions to the benefit cap would increase by millions the amount with which the Council would need to subsidise the running of this accommodation. There was also a significant risk of levels of need for this accommodation increasing, with the Housing Bill containing measures which would further drive down the availability of permanent homes for social rent for people to move from temporary accommodation into. This Council and others operating in London were facing challenges which in the current environment they would not be able to build their way out of.

5.5  At this point, the Mayor addressed the questions that had been submitted.

Question 1 -Members would like information about the quality and type of temporary accommodation provided

5.6  The Mayor advised that there were around 2,400 households housed in temporary accommodation at the end of February 2016. He said that 8 different types of units were used to provide housing to these households.

5.7  These ranged from hostels owned or rented by the Council, to accommodation leased from housing associations, through to bed and breakfast units and self-contained annexe accommodation. The latter two were generally rented on a nightly basis by the Council, and there were around 700 of these in total.

5.8  In terms of quality, the Mayor said that it differed within the accommodation types themselves, and between the different types. He said that the quality was most variable and difficult to monitor within the nightly rented options. This, along with these arrangements being significantly more expensive than hostel accommodation made this the least preferred option for the Council.

5.9  He said that standards in these nightly-rented units varied considerably, and that with the need for the service to obtain units at short notice to meet an emergency need, that it was not possible to inspect the properties prior to a family being placed. Quality was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

6.1  Following a discussion around the Member-led review which the Scrutiny Officer was not present for, Members asked that the following points be noted:

·  That the Members in attendance felt it very important that all Scrutiny Chairs and Vice Chairs (in addition to any other Members wishing to) participated in discussions with the consultants carrying out the review, before the work reached concluding or finding stages.

·  Members appreciated that efforts had been made to interview Cllrs Rahilly and Rennison (and perhaps others) but that they had not always been available due to their day time commitments.  They also noted that the briefing circulated prior to this meeting had stated that round up interview sessions would be done after the Easter break.

·  However, Members were keen that all Chairs and Vice Chairs were able to participate in interviews during the evidence gathering stages of the review. If it made arranging the interviews easier, Members (particularly Cllr Rahilly) would be happy to do them over the phone.

·  In terms of the questions the review would seek to answer, Members asked that it explored how Scrutiny Commissions might ensure that they continued to be able to set their own agendas and to drive policy work, whilst also ensuring that they were able to and did, hold the executive to account.  They also felt that the review needed to explore how the Scrutiny function could best work with policy areas of the Council and services.

6.2  The Scrutiny Officer thanked Members for their comments and advised that he would raise these with the appropriate officers.

7.1  As the first element of this item, Cllr Rennison advised Members that the January Governance and Resources Commission (for which she was Vice Chair) had held a discussion in January around any future Budget Scrutiny Task Groups which they felt that the Scrutiny function might carry out.

7.2  These would be in addition to the groups which met in late 2015 to review budget savings proposals for the financial year 2016/17.

7.3  There was a view from the Governance and Resources Commission that other Members had been enthusiastic and positive about the previous set of sessions, and that there was appetite for them to continue.

7.4  Further to this discussion, Cllr Rennison had been in dialogue with the Assistant Chief Executive. She now had a proposed set of four Task Groups with separate remits, as per below:

·  Commercialisation and Income Generation

·  Preventative Spend on Vulnerable Residents

·  Housing revenue Account Savings

·  Targeted Services

7.5  Cllr Rennison advised Members that she wished to receive a view tonight around whether the groups should run again, whether they should be established for a one year period or for a longer term, and whether the areas proposed were acceptable to Members.

7.6  Cllr Rennison reminded Members that one point of learning from the previous set of meetings had been that they should have been set up at an earlier point of the year. This would enable the groups to fully help to shape the proposals for savings, rather than working more to review the options put forward. She therefore proposed that if the activity was to go ahead, that meetings should start during the summer.

7.7  Cllr Rennison also advised Members that a decision on whether the Scrutiny function should again support the Budget Scrutiny Task Groups would need to be made alongside a consideration of the resources available and how these would be prioritised. The previous set had been delivered as an add-on to the general workloads of the Scrutiny Team. She said that this arrangement was not necessarily sustainable for the longer term, particularly as there appeared to be a view among Members that any further set(s) of Task Groups should conclude with the production of a report (which the previous set did not). She said that a decision to re-establish a set of Task Groups with reports to be produced might impact on the ability of Officers to also support Scrutiny reviews of the different Commissions.

7.8  There was a general view among the Chairs and Vice Chairs that the previous set of Task Groups had been useful and worthwhile. There was a majority that these should continue, although there was also a view from one Member that any agreement on their continuation should be subject to the work of Scrutiny Commissions not being undermined.

7.9  At the end of the discussion, the following was agreed:

·  That there was an agreement in principle that Budget Scrutiny Task Groups be established, but that this was contingent on the findings of the Member-led  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

8.1  There was no other business.