Agenda item

4.1  The Chair thanked the Officers in attendance for having provided the paper which had been sent to Members some days previously.

4.2  She said that the background to the item was that Members of the Task Group had been keen to explore and receive information on, any movement towards the brining together of waste and cleansing functions currently delivered separately by the Council and Hackney Homes.

4.3  Invited to begin a presentation on the paper, Tom McCourt, Assistant Director, Public Realm advised Members that it was split into three main sections.

4.4  Part A gave an overview of the standards and principles that integrated public realm services would seek to achieve and operate within. Part B looked at how an integrated approach would look in practice and pros and cons around it. The final section gave a proposed timeline for further design work and implementation.

4.5  Further to the Chair inviting questions and a Member asking who was leading on the work, the Assistant Director, Public Realm said that it would be vital that the correct governance was in place. It was therefore proposed that the governance of the programme was overseen by the Public Realm Cross Cutting Review Programme Board which was already in place, and on which senior Officers and Members were represented. Dedicated project management resources would be allocated to the work from the relevant service area of the Chief Executive’s Directorate.

4.6  A Member said that he fully agreed that adequate oversight and Governance needed to be in place. He was keen that a wide range of Members were given opportunity to hear updates on progress and to feed in their ideas, throughout the process.

4.7  The Cabinet Member for Housing said that the Cross Cutting Review of Public Realm (within which the plans for integration would be made and delivered) would have the same Governance Structures as the other Cross Cutting Reviews which were being delivered, and that all had project boards with a Member voice.

4.8  The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Sustainability confirmed that other cross cutting programmes which the Public Realm work would follow the principles of, had effective Governance arrangements in place which ensured Member input. In particular, the Enforcement Programme was well progressed. This said, she would welcome any opportunity to attend the relevant Scrutiny Commission (Living in Hackney) to give a single update, or to be asked to give stage by stage progress reports.

4.9  The Chair noted that there was significant interest amongst many Members in there being progress towards the joining up of cleansing and waste services, and that many wanted to be kept updated throughout the process. As an action arising from the meeting, she suggested that she write to the Chair of Living in Hackney to suggest that his Commission considered requesting regular progress updates on the integration of Public Realm services.

4.10  A Member said that he felt it hugely positive that a report had now been provided with a timetable for integration and an actual initial figure for the savings expected from this. He was thankful for the efforts of Officers on this. He said that the approach taken to delivering savings by joining up services was one which he felt could be rolled out to another areas also. As such, he felt that continued pressure needed to be applied to ensure that this work could be completed so that it could then be used to inform other projects.

4.11  Another Member also celebrated the level of thought and detail that the paper offered to Members. However, while he said that Hackney Homes tenants and leaseholders would be pleased upon any efficiencies being achieved which reduced their service charges, he also wished to sound a note of caution. He said that there would be politically difficult decisions for Members to make if there was to be a more standardised service offer across both streets and estates. He said that an example was with parking charges and making these more equal; at present residents living on estates benefitted from cheaper parking permits than residents of street based properties. Changes which would increase charges for some residents would be more difficult to implement.

4.12  The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Sustainability thanked the Member for his point, and agreed that political decisions would be needed which all Members would contribute towards. In terms of parking charges, it was the case that permit prices differed according to whether a resident lived in a street property or an estate. The structures of charges (in terms of any differential rates informed by emission levels and or engine size) also differed between spaces managed by Hackney Homes and those managed by the Council.

4.13  The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Sustainability said that decisions would be needed at a later point around whether a consistent charging scheme on both streets and estates should be delivered. However, at this stage, the focus on was on reaching a point where a single system had the ability to process permit applications and parking tickets for vehicles both on estates and on the street. At present distinct systems did this.

4.14  The Cabinet Member for Housing said that while any move to increase charges for estate parking permits estates would not be popular, that improvements to processes could perhaps mitigate hostility. Data showed that 15,000 visits to Neighbourhood Offices each year involved parking permit issues. This was an inefficient use of residents’ time. Improvements to processes would be well received.

4.15  In response to a Member asking what the next steps were, the Assistant Director, Public Realm said that it would be a case of translating the final section of the report looking at plans and timescales, into a formal project plan. This would detail who was doing what and identify resources to help support the work.

4.16  Jim Paterson, Head of Building Maintenance and Estate Environment, Hackney Homes, said that himself and the Head of Environmental Operations for the Council were working together to reach an understanding of the services that they ran separately. This involved working through the different functions and identifying where they lent themselves to immediate integration, and where matters would be more complex.

4.17  John Wheatley, Head of Environmental Operations for the Council, said that programmes of training would be required as some members of staff would be asked to carry out tasks which were new to them. In addition, there would be industrial relations challenges as there would be staff reductions. This would include through restructures of management.

4.18  However, he felt that Officers were well placed to deliver the changes. They had delivered a similar project successfully when recycling collections were brought back into the Council from an external provider.

4.19  The Head of Environmental Operations said that, while bringing the recycling collection function into the Council, they had secured a wide range of efficiencies and improvements through the more effective use of vehicles and better use of equipment. A project to bring together the waste and cleansing functions of Hackney Homes and the Council would secure improvements in a similar fashion. Also, and in addition to delivering efficiencies, the integration would bring improvements to the customer experience, with better weekend provision on estates where it was shown to be needed.

4.20  A Member asked whether, where there was clear symmetry between functions delivered by Hackney Homes and the Council, these could be brought together before April 2016.

4.21  In response to this the Assistant Director, Public Realm said that while he would like to work towards integration as soon as possible, that he felt that it might not be possible to achieve this before April 2016. He said that he felt that integration would be best implemented within a single phase; the industrial relations aspect of the work could be managed most effectively within this arrangement. 

 4.22  The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Sustainability said that there were a number of steps involved with the integration work which would be politically sensitive. In particular, this would be around the extent to which industrial relations were successfully managed and around the extent to which the Council was able to engage tenants and leaseholders in consultation and dialogue. The Programme would be managed and monitored closely, and both she and the Cabinet Member for Housing would keep Risk Registers and other relevant project documentation closely under review.

4.23  Cllr Glanville agreed that there would be challenges involved, with Members needing to make and communicate the basis for, difficult decisions. However, he felt that the Council stood in good stead to do this well with the experience that it had of delivering change. Difficult steps had been taken including the closing of some chutes on estates, and by managing communications on these well, residents had generally been persuaded of the merits of these.

4.24  A Member said that residents and businesses in his ward would be very concerned if any reorganisation removed high performing street sweepers, who they had built good relationships with and saw as a vital part of the Council. He asked that any changes were fully communicated with Ward Councillors and justification be given so that they could effectively communicate with constituents.

4.25  The Head of Environmental Operations said that he fully appreciated that residents of the borough built relationships with cleansing staff in their area. He had been a street sweeper in Kensington and Chelsea for a ten year period and had seen first hand the extent to which residents built affinities with good members of staff.

4.26  The Head of Building Maintenance and Estate Environment, Hackney Homes, reassured Members that the competitive interview process would very much aim to ensure that the strongest Members of staff across the organisation were retained.

4.27  Asked for their final thoughts the Cabinet Members for Housing and Neighbourhoods and Sustainability both thanked the Budget Scrutiny Task Group for their involvement which had been very helpful.

4.28  The Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Sustainability said that service areas relevant to Public Realm had clear links with the agenda of Hackney a Place for Everyone. By joining up and achieving universally high standards of service around waste, recycling, green travel and others the Council could help ensure that residents across the borough received the same standards.

4.29  Bringing the discussion to a close, the Chair thanked the Cabinet Members and Officers for their insight. In particular, she thanked Officers for having worked hard to provide written information for this meeting and the two previous ones falling within this phase of the Task Group’s work.