Agenda and minutes

To approve the minutes of the meeting held on 21 July 2022 as an accurate record.

The minutes of the meeting held on 21 July 2022 were agreed as an accurate record.

Members and co-opted Members of the Council are reminded that, in accordance with the Council’s Code of Conduct and the statutory provisions of the Localism Act, they are required to consider in advance of each meeting whether they have a disclosable pecuniary interest (DPI), an other registrable interest (ORI) or a non-registrable interest (NRI) in relation to any matter on the agenda.  If advice is needed, Members should contact the Monitoring Officer in good time before the meeting.  

If any Member or co-opted Member of the Council identifies a DPI or ORI which they have not already registered on the Council’s register of interests or which requires updating, they should complete the disclosure form which can be obtained from Democratic Services at any time, copies of which will be available at the meeting for return to the Monitoring Officer.

Members and co-opted Members are required to disclose any DPIs and ORIs at the meeting: -

·     Where the matter relates to a DPI they may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter and must not stay in the meeting unless granted a dispensation.  

·     Where the matter relates to an ORI they may not vote on the matter unless granted a dispensation.   

·     Where a Member or co-opted Member has an NRI which directly relates to their financial interest or wellbeing, or that of a relative or close associate, they must disclose the interest at the meeting, may not take part in any discussion or vote on the matter and must not stay in the meeting unless granted a dispensation.  Where a matter affects the NRI of a Member or co-opted Member, section 9 of Appendix B of the Code of Conduct sets out the test which must be applied by the Member to decide whether disclosure is required.

The Chair will invite Members to make their disclosure orally at the commencement of Agenda item 3, to be recorded in the minutes.

There were no disclosures of interest made at the meeting.

To receive notice of any business not on the agenda which in the opinion of the Chair, by reason of special circumstances, be considered as a matter of urgency.

There were no items of urgent business.

The purpose of this report is to enable the Scrutiny & Overview Committee to review the performance of the Community Safety Partnership with a view to seeking reassurance on the effectiveness of the partnership.

The Committee considered a report set out on pages 13 – 116 of the agenda which provided an overview of the performance of the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) and included a draft version of the 2022 Strategic Assessment. The report had been scheduled for consideration by the Committee to allow reassurance to be sought on the performance of the partnership.

The Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Councillor Ola Kolade, and members of the Partnership, including the local Chief Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police, Dave Stringer, and the Director of Culture & Community Safety, Kristian Aspinall, were in attendance for this item.

The first question on this item asked why 50% of women in a recent survey had indicated that they felt unsafe in the borough? It was advised that of the 1,200 women surveyed, the findings indicated that key areas where people felt unsafe were public transport and bus stops. As such it will be essential to have intervention in place to tackle these concerns. Two key issues for Croydon were public safety and domestic abuse with over 5,000 cases in the past year. The Mayor would be releasing a statement at the next Cabinet meeting to announce a three year plan targeted towards tackling violence against women and girls.  The focus of the Violence Against Women and Girl delivery plan would range from tackling low level issues such as cat calling to serious domestic violence.

Although there was high level data available, it was acknowledged that further work was needed to gather detailed data about why people felt unsafe in the borough. The Police had launched a Walk and Talk scheme with female police officers to meet people in specific areas of concern, which would start to help understand the problems.

As domestic violence was an existing strategic priority for the CSP and the level of domestic violence had increased year on year for the past five year, it was questioned how the new strategy could make a difference. It was advised that reporting incidents of domestic violence should be encouraged and the partnership work between the Family Justice Centre (FJC) and the Police had led to increased levels of reporting. The potential number of unreported incidents was of greater concern and required further work to understand the scale of the problem.

It was questioned whether there was sufficient capacity within the FJC to cope with the demand for its services. It was confirmed that the FJC worked with high risk cases, and medium and low risk cases were passed to third sector organisations to manage capacity. It was a challenge to manage the capacity of the service, but it had been successful at drawing additional resource from the Home Office and other sources because of its good reputation.

It was advised that the FJC provided support for high risk cases to help reduce the risk to the point that they could be passed to other organisations to continue the support.  Although the service managed high risk cases, it also  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47/22

The purpose of this report is inform the Scrutiny & Overview Committee on Council Tax collection, recovery and enforcement.

The Committee agreed that this report would be deferred until its next meeting on 18 October 2022 to allow further time to for feedback from residents and voluntary sector groups.

Resolved: That the item is deferred.

The Committee is asked to review the latest Budget Monitoring report for Period 4 (July 2022) and consider whether it is reassured by the progress made in delivering the budget or whether there are any concerns it wishes to flag. 

The Committee considered a report set out in the supplementary agenda which provided an overview of the latest budget position up to the end of July 2022. This report was included on the agenda to give the Committee the opportunity to scrutinise the delivery of 2022-23 budget.

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Councillor Jason Cummings and members of the Corporate Management Team were in attendance at the meeting for this item.

At the outset of this item the Chair expressed the Committee’s disappointment that the report for this item had not been received until 5pm on the day before the meeting. Although Members had agreed to go ahead with this item, the Committee wanted to formally record its disappointment about the late report. The disappointment of the Committee was accepted, with assurance given that the lateness was an issue of timing and ensuring the report reflected the latest budget position, rather than any reflection of past issues concern financial reporting. 

Further clarity was requested on the implications for the Council’s reserves from the current projected overspend. It was advised that it was possible the amount in both the general fund reserve and earmarked reserves may be higher than originally estimated once the outturn process had been completed on the 2021-22 accounts, although this could not be confirmed at the time of the meeting. Although there had been no decision taken, the allocation of £6.9m to reserves in the 2022-23 budget may be reviewed to take account of the current budget position. It was requested that further commentary on the Council’s reserves be added to future budget monitoring reports.

From the report, it was noted that the current projected income from car parking was significantly below what had originally been forecasted in the budget agreed in March 2022. As such it was questioned how the Council’s forecasting was being improved to reduce the likelihood of similar instances of overestimating happening again.  In response it was highlighted that there were several elements agreed within the budget in March that would not be achieved, which totalled £19m. As well as car parking income, an overspend in the Housing Benefit budget was also a significant contributor to the £19m. At present the budget was projecting a £9m overspend which if not for the unrealised elements totalling £19m would be an underspend.

To prevent a repeat of this happening again, CIPFA was delivering budget training to managers across the Council, along with the Council’s own in-house training. The Chief Executive and the Section 151 Officer held monthly budget assurance meetings, which helped to ensure that there was a firm understanding of the Council’s budget situation. As part of the work on 2023-24 budget, additional resource was being invested into programme management to support the transformation work and the delivery of savings.

As it was advised that the implementation of robust financial reporting processes was still a work in progress, it was questioned how long it was likely to be before budget data could be produced  ...  view the full minutes text for item 49/22

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee is asked to: -

1.     Note the most recent version of the Scrutiny Work Programme presented in the report.

2.     Consider whether there are any other items that should be provisionally added to the work programme as a result of the discussions held during the meeting.

The Committee considered a report set out on pages 169 to 182 of the agenda which outlined the work programme for the Scrutiny & Overview Committee and its three sub-committee. The Committee was asked to note the current position of the work programme and consider if there were any items arising from the meeting that should be scheduled for further scrutiny at a later date.

It was confirmed that working was progressing on establishing a Homes Sub-Committee, with a report due to be brought to the next meeting for sign off.

Resolved: The Committee resolved: -

1. To note the most recent version of the Scrutiny Work Programme presented in the report.
2. That no further items would be added to the Work Programme as a result of the meeting.

The following motion is to be moved and seconded where it is proposed to exclude the press and public from the remainder of a meeting:

“That, under Section 100A(4) of the Local Government Act, 1972, the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information falling within those paragraphs indicated in Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972, as amended.”

This motion was not required.