Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 29 July 2025, 6:00pm

Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 29th July 2025 at 6:00pm

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Start of webcast

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Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Mr Jake Hamilton
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly

1 Apologies for Absence

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2 Declarations of Interest

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Declarations of Interest

3 Minutes

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Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly

4 Minutes of the Finance and Performance Sub-Committee

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Minutes Public Pack, 01/07/2025 Finance and Performance Scrutiny Sub-Committee

Cllr Mike Blakemore

5 Cabinet Member updates

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Cabinet Member Update

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Paul Thomas
Cllr Mike Blakemore
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Councillor Tony Hills
Cllr Mike Blakemore
Cllr Rich Holgate
Cllr Mike Blakemore
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Bridget Chapman
Cllr Mike Blakemore
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Anita Jones
Cllr Mike Blakemore
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Mike Blakemore
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Mike Blakemore
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly

6 Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Service Charge 'De-Pooling' For Council Housing Tenants - Update

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Gill Butler
Cllr Rebecca Shoob
Gill Butler
Mrs Executive Test-Exec
Gill Butler
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Elaine Martin
Gill Butler
Mrs Executive Test-Exec
Gill Butler
Cllr Paul Thomas
Gill Butler
Cllr Paul Thomas
Gill Butler
Cllr Paul Thomas
Gill Butler
Cllr Paul Thomas
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Councillor Tony Hills
Gill Butler
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Rich Holgate
Gill Butler
Mrs Executive Test-Exec
Gill Butler
Cllr Rich Holgate
Gill Butler
Cllr Bridget Chapman
Gill Butler
Mrs Executive Test-Exec
Gill Butler
Cllr Bridget Chapman
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Anita Jones
Gill Butler
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Gill Butler
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Gill Butler
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Councillor Tony Hills
Gill Butler
Councillor Tony Hills
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
SPEAKER
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Anita Jones
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Anita Jones
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Gill Butler
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly

7 Asset Management Strategy

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Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Bridget Chapman
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Anita Jones
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Paul Thomas
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Paul Thomas
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Rich Holgate
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Rich Holgate
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Paul Thomas
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Dr Susan Priest
Councillor Tony Hills
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Folkestone & Hythe Officer
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Anita Jones
Councillor Tony Hills
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Paul Thomas
Cllr Bridget Chapman
Cllr Rich Holgate
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Elaine Martin
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr John Wing
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly

8 Equitability of council resource across the district

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OSC 29th July 2025 Equitability of Resources

Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Rich Holgate
Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Elaine Martin
Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Bridget Chapman
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Bridget Chapman
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Councillor Tony Hills
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Anita Jones
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Paul Thomas
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Cllr Rich Holgate
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
Mr Ewan Green
Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly
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Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:00:03

Good evening and welcome to the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee. This

meeting will be webcast live to the internet. For those who do not wish to be recorded or

filmed you will need to leave the chamber. For members, officers and others speaking

at the meeting it is important that the microphones are used so viewers on the webcast and others

in the room may hear you. Would anyone with a mobile phone please switch it to silent

as they can be distracting.

I'd like to remind members that although we all have

strong opinions or matters under consideration,

it is important to treat members, officers,

and public speakers with respect.

So we'll start straight away with item one,

Mr Jake Hamilton - 0:00:49

apologies for absence.

Thank you, Chair.

We have apologies from Councillors Davidson

and Alan Martin.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:00:55

Thank you very much.

OK, so item 2, declarations of interest.

Are there any declarations of interest from members?

1 Apologies for Absence

2 Declarations of Interest

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:01:08

Thank you.

Item 3, minutes.

3 Minutes

To consider and approve as a correct record, the minutes of the meeting held on 27th May

and another on the 1st of July 2025.

I'll take them as one item.

And so can I invite somebody to propose?

Thank you, Councillor Thomas.

And somebody to second.

Thank you, Councillor Chapman.

And a vote with a show of hands, please.

Okay.

I will sign those.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:01:52

Right, we then have a cabinet member update.

4 Minutes of the Finance and Performance Sub-Committee

Councillor Blakemore is here for his update.

Thank you, Councillor Blakemore.

Thank you, Chair.

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:02:03

Evening members of the committee.

Thank you for inviting me here.

So this time, as different from before, I submitted a written report.

I'm not sure if you want me to go through all of that with you now?

I don't believe you need to. You can summarise if you wish.

Yes, thank you.

So, yeah, as I last appeared for you in December and outlined then the work around the three strands of my portfolio,

which is community safety, health and wellbeing, and then what we term community empowerment,

working with the community in the way that we do.

Pleased to report making good progress in all three.

Sometimes in the case of health and well -being,

our influence is limited, and although we have

the folks in the Hive Health Alliance,

which is doing good work, focused on the marsh,

progress is slow, and we're working with partners there,

trying to bring influence that we can,

the focus that we can.

On community safety, obviously issues bubble up,

but we are lucky here to have a very good

community safety partnership,

which I turn metres off every fortnight.

It's a very, very active partnership,

and it really is a very good example

of partnership working,

but issues such as antisocial behaviour,

as you all know, do come up regularly,

5 Cabinet Member updates

and I think the partnership helps us to deal with those

in the most effective way that we can.

I also sit on the Kent Police and Crime Panel,

which performs a very important function.

It's the only scrutiny of the Police and Crime Commissioner.

So we meet quite a lot towards the sort of the back end and the beginning of the year

is where most of those meetings take place.

We had the very important task of reappointing the Chief Constable, who just thought I'd

end up doing that, which we did at the beginning of the year in the retire and rehire schemes.

So he basically reached retirement age and then has been taken on.

But it's a good opportunity to talk about policing more broadly about, for instance,

the community beat officers programme.

I don't know what your experience of that has been, but they're now fully up to strength

and hopefully we're all working well with our local beat officers.

But it's a very good opportunity to talk about those kind of issues and about policing more

Generally, the challenges that Kent police face,

as other organisations do with funding,

but the way in which they are actually,

in many ways, succeeding.

Crime levels are lower here than elsewhere,

and charge rates are higher than elsewhere.

So we're fortunate in the district that we don't face

some of the problems that other parts of the county

and other parts of the country are facing.

And then in the work we do with the community

and with community groups,

Many of you have been along to our wellness events,

which have been a great success,

which actually come under the community safety partnership,

they're organised by Tara,

but they really serve a very good function

of encompassing all really of community safety,

health and wellbeing,

and bringing community organisations closer together

to encourage them to work together,

and they all tell us what great networking opportunities

they are as well as opportunities to meet with the public.

We have the largest of those events to date at the Leescliffe Hall,

recently attended by more than 70 different organisations

and many members of the public.

But we also want to think about how not necessarily just going for bigger events,

but also thinking about events where we can perhaps go to places

where people are already there rather than expecting people to come to us,

us going to them and share that useful information with them there.

And then separate to that, we have specific networking events.

We have a couple of those a year, and we have a Meet the Funders event, which is very valuable,

again, all about supporting community groups and organisations and helping them to seek

funding, seek support, to empower them in the way that we can.

I think that probably covers it all.

Oh, the couple of the kind of big ticket issues which have endured this year, although in

The Case of Folkstone Sports Centre with a happy conclusion in that it will reopen in

about a year's time, so that's good news for everyone.

We still wait on Grace Hill Library.

We have the Council supported from the start the community proposal.

The asset of community value process will run until mid -September and then we'll hopefully

find out if not before then whether that can go ahead and there'll be a new and bright

future for Grace Hill but I know that the new administration at KCC many have seen local

county councillors are very supportive of Grace Hill and talking about how we can reopen

it so that's encouraging it. That's encouraging sorry. I'll stop there and I'm happy to try

and answer any questions.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:06:54

Are there any questions? Yes, Councillor Thomas.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:07:01

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mike. Excellent. I read through your report. Excellent. Thank

just reinforce what you said with regard to the police and certainly Steve and

James the RPCs down on Romulos they do an excellent job they hold

regular surgeries and their output from my community voice in terms of making

the community aware of the issues that they're dealing with right through the

whole range of stuff is absolutely fantastic I have to say it's a fantastic

I think the thing that they did in terms of putting that was really, really good.

Just one point about Fotunhive Health Alliance.

Tony and I both sit on the Romy Marsh Primary Care Network Integrated Neighbourhood team,

along with NHS and local voluntary sector people as well.

Having read your report and some of the things that you're dealing with, there's a lot of

similarities between that and the five themes that we're dealing with in the integrated

particularly things like rural patient transport and that kind of stuff.

I just wonder if there was an opportunity

to make sure that we were working together

and we're engaged in what we're doing

and not duplicating efforts,

particularly when it comes to NHS resources.

Again, I think there's an opportunity there,

certainly from my perspective,

on what we could do to make sure that we're all heading in the same direction.

A key part of that, and I know it's been kicking around for many years, is the health centre

for Longy Marsh, which is vital to what we need to do for the future.

Whatever we can do through that route to help support what you do for the Health Alliance,

I think we just need maybe for us to have a little get -together outside of this and

make sure we're all joined up.

Again, just excellent report and thank you very much for it.

Yes, thank you for that.

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:08:52

And I think on health, yeah, I mean, it's good in a way

we are working on the same themes,

because it shows hopefully that it's the right themes

and that we can concentrate efforts together.

I know with the Health Alliance, I'm not sure,

on the top of my head, who the entire membership of it,

but there may well be that partnership's represented on there.

I hope it is.

But we can talk outside the meeting

and make sure that we're joined up on that.

Certainly, it's an open door as far as

the Health Alliance is concerned,

so anyone else is welcome to join it,

other people have this year as it's kind of got more into actually delivering what

it's trying to do rather than just working out the priorities as it was last year.

Councillor Hill.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:09:30

Thank you, Chair.

I'd just like to indulge what Paul said.

Councillor Tony Hills - 0:09:34

It's so important that we break down some of the artificial walls of information between

various organisations.

There's a lot of duplication going on and we've got to get involved and make sure we

can streamline that.

and I think that can be done.

And I'll endorse totally about our local police officers.

The big difference is there, you have a name,

a person you can contact through social media,

and it actually comes back to you.

It's actually marvellous, it really does work,

and it's made such a big difference to the March.

I worry a bit more about rural crime,

we are, flight tipping is a problem,

you know, air coursing can be a problem,

and the theft of agricultural vehicles and so on.

It's always a problem, because there's such a high value.

But I think as long as you keep an open mind and keep networking,

that's on the right lines. So, well done.

Thank you.

Councillor Holgate.

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:10:33

Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:10:37

Good evening, Councillor Blaigmore. Thank you so much for the report.

I had five questions, if I may.

And I've been made to be so bold.

Hopefully, relatively straightforward.

And the anti -social behaviour is obviously,

the sort of anecdotal work that is going well.

I was curious, are we seeing improvements in the data

around anti -social behaviour, and if not,

do we have a view on what that would look like moving forward?

Most of these are numbers based,

because that's just how I think.

And the second question, the Health Alliance

is extraordinary, it's welcome news,

and especially for the Marsh.

and again I was curious what would success look like for the Health Alliance in terms of do they actually do they have

They I know they want to address you on their poor health appreciate

but you know do they have kind of more defined criteria for for the work that they're going to do and

in terms of the Grace Hill

Work again exciting news and hope we definitely move forward. I'm twitchy that the

deadline is mid -september given there's a

and I just wanted to ask, do we have a contingency plan in mind?

You mentioned a community safety partnership.

We see, I think it was arrests, I don't know the right words,

forgive me, arrests were higher and charges were lower than elsewhere.

And when you say elsewhere, do you mean Kent, Southeast,

just kind of curious, quantifying that.

And great to see again that we're supporting people and finding funding.

I think it's a really untapped opportunity in how we can help the community.

Again, do we communicate? I'd just love to see how well we communicate that and those success storeys that again we can amplify from residents and businesses in the district. Thanks.

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:12:22

Thank you Councillor Holgate. I'll take those in turn. So ASB is a complicated one because ASB takes lots and lots of different forms.

it can include, or fly tipping it can include noise nuisance, things like that.

We were speaking about it this afternoon with one of the officers about a particular, you

know, pitch figures within a particular area.

So I can get figures for you on it.

From the police, I believe if I write you the figures indicate a reduction in ASB, but

I'd like to drill down a bit more into that and try and give you more of a complete picture

because it is kind of depending what kind of...

Some of it's dealt with, a lot of it's dealt with by the police

and we always encourage residents to report antisocial behaviour to the police.

But some of it does fall within our remit

and generally we try and approach it from a partnership point of view.

The Health Alliance, I'm not sure off the top of my head exactly.

I don't think we've got to the stage of actually setting kind of...

I mean, what would success look like is obviously tackling some of those issues.

There's some quite practical stuff around service navigation,

and as Councillor Thomas alluded to, the big issue,

particularly on the March, but in other parts of the district

as well, about how do people get to hospital appointments,

and that unlocks so much if you can go some way

to fixing that problem, because I heard on the radio

this morning, I don't know if it's right,

but there are 50 ,000 cancelled appointments

every day in the NHS.

They'll be for all sorts of different reasons,

but transport is a big part of that.

And at the Health Alliance, we've discussed this

and some horrendous storeys about a chap going up

for an appointment at Canterbury Hospital

and sleeping overnight in the park

because it was the only way he could get to his appointment

because he couldn't get there.

He had an early morning appointment,

he couldn't get there any other way,

went up the night before and slept in the park to get to it.

And I know there are lots of voluntary organisations

like the Marsh B operating out of the community hub

that are doing a fantastic job to try and tackle that.

So there's some quite practical things

that we'd like to see changed,

but we aren't at the stage of setting KPIs at this stage.

On Grace Hill, unfortunately it's not really within our gift

so it's the proposal from creative,

led by Creative Folkestone really,

is the one that's been considered.

It's largely within KCC's gift as to whether we go ahead

that it's their building, not ours.

All we've done is support that community proposal

in the way that we can, but I'll be having a meeting soon

with others involved in that,

so we can see where we are on that

before we reach that deadline

and see if there's anything else that can be done.

And I know that others like Tony Bourne MP

has been very, very helpful in trying

to move things behind the scenes

to get us to the right place on that,

and it is encouraging that the new administration

seems much more receptive.

Can you say, I think the figures I referred to are pent.

And supporting the community,

I don't know if you meant publicising it on behalf

of the council or publicising it to other organisations,

but certainly, yeah, when it comes to the Meet the Funders,

we've had record numbers, which is a good thing

and a bad thing, I guess, because it shows just

what merry -go -round is, trying to source funding

for organisations that are desperate for any help

and advice and every time we have the event we have more people there than the time before.

And I think we do publicise these things but we can always do more on that.

And I think yes, in terms of community organisations, all of them are struggling for funding and

we've seen some high profile results of that with systems advice and to close their office

and folks and things like that and I think that's only going to continue.

anyone who says austerity is over, it's not. This is the long tail of it, if you like.

And I think you'll see that same effect with voluntary community organisations going forward

and there'll have to be some economies of scale and I think you will see

your social enterprise, Kent, now based out of Ashford rather than the rest of our folks

are still doing great work, still doing great things, so you'll see more and more, I think,

I heard recently about the Samaritans closing 100 offices around the country.

Because of that, just the financial cost of premises and of staff is just too high to

meet.

So I think anything we can do to try and help them to create the common years of scale and

talk to each other and how they can work together I think is probably the most important thing

we can do as far as community empowerment in the coming years.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:17:06

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:17:11

Thank you. Good evening, Councillor Blakemore. I've got three sets of questions, not five,

but I'll battle through them quickly. The first one is that, as you're aware, I'm sure

that there's unfortunately growing amounts of far -right organisation, particularly targeting

areas where people seeking asylum are being housed. We have a significant number of unaccompanied

asylum seeking children in the area. So obviously I'd expect you to go into details but it would

be good to know that that's action to kind of push back against that or to organise in

some way that protects those people is happening.

In terms of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund,

I'm just wondering how those,

the impact of those funds is gonna be evaluated.

What plans, recommendations are gonna come out

and would this council look to find funding

to address those issues?

In terms of the District Food Network,

how much funding does the council currently contribute

to the District Food Network?

what work goes on behind the scenes between all the organisations that

contribute to the district food network in terms of generating impact assessments

etc. What are the levels of food deprivation? Where are they the highest?

What the headline cause has been communicated? What work is going on to

reduce food poverty? Yeah.

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:19:01

Far right organisers, yes, but we're going to go into detail on it, but definitely it's

something we talk about with the police, so I think we can be confident that they're on

it with that, and I have spoken to them myself when we had the riots last year as well about

seeking reassurance that we were well prepared for that.

So yeah.

UK Sheppard, sorry, but I have to come back to you on that, I don't have that information,

I'm afraid.

And similarly on the District Food Network, I don't know off the top of my head, we host

it but again I come back to that.

It's a kind of, it's a very good but it's a fairly loose kind of group of organisations

working together for a very good cause and I think we would all agree between the different

organisations that there's possibly a way in which we need to get to a more co -ordinated

place because there are basically lots and lots of different places in the district providing

larders and things like that and possibly there's a way in which we can coordinate that

better and look at that and perhaps kind of align it better with where the food deprivation

is at its worst.

But it's doing a good job.

Rainbow Centre chair it and they're doing a great job of that as they are with the mobile

food service which has increased its, again good thing and a bad thing, increased the

of users of the mobile food service and that's been a great success because that's taken

those, both the pantry and the larder to people where they need it rather than them having

to battle with bus services or whatever to try and get to those services and that's been

a great success including going over to LID.

So it's been a great success but I think yeah, there's probably more we can do.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:20:43

Councillor Joan.

Thank you, just a quick question.

and I think a lot of things have been covered.

Cllr Anita Jones - 0:20:48

Excellent work, as always, thank you

for everything you're doing.

It's really good to see you working

with so many different groups.

I think just following on from the thing

about the Food Network, obviously I'm aware

that the Rainbow Centre are in a bit of a difficult position

with their food bank at the moment

in that they have to find a new location.

Are you working with them to help them

try and find something exciting?

This is a huge concern because obviously

provide so much for our district so what support can you give them?

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:21:23

Yeah I agree it is an enormous challenge for them.

I say if people don't know they're looking for a new warehouse because they've had one

previously which is no longer available to them.

So I don't think there's much we can do directly as a council other than what everyone else

is doing is to, and I've got some suggestions their way from through the networking event

which we held over at St Bairns Bay recently and I speak to someone there and it turned

somebody in here, you know, and so we're helping them in that sense in trying to put them in touch

with people who might be able to, I don't know whether that came to anything in that conversation here,

but a couple of ideas their way, so I haven't heard whether they've been successful yet,

but we'll keep on, if anyone has any suggestions at all about, it's quite a large warehouse they need

for their food and in a reasonably accessible location, but we'll keep trying to help them.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:22:13

Okay, one other question.

Townsplicer has been doing an amazing job

over the last couple of years,

and unfortunately they've lost their funding.

Is there any way that you can support them

in the same way that you've tried to support Rainbow Centre

in finding new funding?

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:22:33

Well, I don't think we have additional funding

to be able to support it.

It was run by some of our houses, you know,

with some support from other organisations.

It had some safer streets funding,

but it's never had funding from this council before,

and unfortunately with our community,

budgets are already committed elsewhere,

so it would mean, unless we could find

some extra money from elsewhere,

it would mean taking that away from another project,

so not at the moment, no.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:23:07

Okay, thank you.

So when I spoke about funding,

it wasn't just exclusively from the district council,

because obviously there are multiple funders,

and in the excellent work that you're doing

with the Community Safety Partnership,

bringing charities, organisations, initiatives together,

perhaps through that and the networks that have been created there,

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:23:28

there might be opportunities for them to work with other people.

Yeah, I would say they haven't approached us for funding,

so obviously if they did, then we'd look at that and consider that,

but no -one's come to us with a proposal for that,

so I think we'd want them to do that

and we'd want to see a proposal before we could consider whether we could fund it.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:23:46

Okay, thank you.

So just to finish off, thank you so much for all the work that you're doing.

I have been to the community's safety partnership events, and they're really, really well attended,

and they're making a really big difference.

So thank you for your work.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:24:04

Right, no other questions, so we'll move on to our next item.

6 Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Service Charge 'De-Pooling' For Council Housing Tenants - Update

So that's item number six, HRA Service Charge

de -pooling project.

This item will be introduced by Jill Butler,

Chief Officer for Housing.

Gill Butler - 0:24:22

Thank you, Chair.

Actually the item's going to be introduced by

Councillor Shub and then I'm going to do the presentation.

That's absolutely fine, Councillor Shub.

Thank you, Chair.

Cllr Rebecca Shoob - 0:24:32

Oh yes, so I'll be obviously handing over to Jill and Richard

that can give you a more detailed overview and a bit more context.

But I'd just like to outline the overarching aim of the de -pooling exercise

and a little bit more about the consultation.

Obviously, tonight's session is an important part of that.

So the de -pooling project is about working out accurate

and individual service charges for council tenants

where communal services are provided.

So if the HRA is able to collect all the money that's due, this is likely to be around £1 .2

million a year.

That's an additional £937 ,000 a year on the money that we're currently collecting from

service charges.

And just to stress that that is meeting the full cost recovery, that's £1 .2 million.

So this is money that we could then spend on our key priorities, investing in our stock,

energy efficiency measures, meeting decent homes and compliance standards and all the

new government legislation that's going to be coming up.

As well as of course contributing to our new build and acquisition plans to help alleviate

the council's waiting list and homelessness across the district.

So as the report stresses, consultation and transparent communication in this project

are really important.

So over the next nine months, the housing team has a communication and consultation

plan to help tenants understand why the council needs to do the de -pooling of service charges

and how we can help lessen the financial impact by supporting those who need it.

So we're looking at the practicalities of creating and administering some sort of tenant hardship fund,

which tenants could apply to for help with additional costs for a short period of time.

And of course we'll be using our excellent welfare benefits officers,

our neighbourhood officers and independent living officers

to help us identify anyone who perhaps isn't currently claiming

all the benefits that they may be entitled to.

The consultation and communication work

should provide a good opportunity

to identify any other issues

which may arise through the revised charges,

particularly in regard to taking a proactive approach

to tenants who may be at risk of falling into rent and service charge arrears.

So I will hand you over now to officers to take you through the detail.

And I thank you in advance for the committee's input to this. Thank you.

Gill Butler - 0:27:33

Thank you, Councillor Toome.

I think you've pretty much covered the first slide for me.

I will just stress that the HRE is one of the last local authorities in the country

to be de -pooling service charges.

And by doing this now, we believe that we will be able

to implement a fair and transparent charging regime

across the service charge elements.

I'll just give you a minute just to,

I'm sure Councillor Huber has in fact covered everything

on that slide, so I'm gonna move on to the next one.

This is a list of the HRA 30 year business plan priorities

agreed by Overmute Scrutiny and also Cabinet in December 2023.

So just to sum up this list of priorities,

in order to ensure that the Council Housing Service

is able to continue to deliver against all of its priorities,

not just these ones but all of them,

we need to recover the rent and service charges that are due to the HRA.

For many years, by not doing this piece of work

to de -pool service charges or portion out service charges for tenants,

We have been doing our tenants a disservice by under -collecting what's due to the HRA.

And this is about addressing that in as fair and equitable way as we possibly can.

Whilst we do want to aim for full cost recovery because of the impact that this may have on some tenants,

we want to fully consult with members and tenants before making any final decisions

about this very important revenue stream to the HRA and to the Council.

So far, this is a quick update, so far in the project, Rich Parker and the team have

done a considerable amount of work in year one of the project.

We've introduced a new tenancy agreement which Cabinet approved and went live in May to all

tenants.

The team have been able to work with the utilities companies

to identify the location of communal metres.

We have amalgamated all the supplies into one contract

and we have been able to update old style metres

to what I'm told is automated metre reading,

AMR metres in most of our blocks now.

So we are getting much more accurate billing

than we were a few years ago.

Full costing of HRA grounds maintenance has been done and we've introduced a service level

agreement with our in -house team so they have a dedicated work at each block and scheme

now which means that we can accurately apportion out the services the tenants actually receive

in each block and scheme and hold them to account and hold us to account if it's not

completed as per the SLA.

Rich and the team have also spent a lot of time

building the service charge module

within the NEC housing system to allow us to upload

and manage tenant service charges directly from the system

rather than using the old finance system and spreadsheets.

We now have it all ready to go on NEC.

Just quickly, this slide is just to give you

a bit of info on the type of service charges

that are being included in this review.

Service charges can be passed into two distinct categories.

The core services and what we're calling supplementary.

Core services are the base services required

any communal building or state or scheme

to ensure that the building is maintained

in a clean and safe and compliant manner

with health and safety requirements.

So we can recharge in service charges things like

fire safety equipment to be maintained, that sort of thing.

Supplementary services are those additional services

that benefit tenants in blocks and schemes,

which are in addition to the core services and cover

nice to have elements or quite crucial to have,

depending on your view, such as lifts, laundry rooms,

which mostly are in the independent living schemes.

These all need to be maintained and paid for, of course.

So those are supplementary.

On most occasions, the supplementary services

really, as I say, apply to the independent living sites

in our stock.

So we need to recognise the fact that some of the charges

are going to be higher in the independent living schemes

and those general needs schemes where perhaps

and have a lot of services, but not many flats.

I'll give you an example.

As an example of a supplementary charge

not being passed on to the tenants in full currently,

the cost to the HRA for just lift maintenance budget

in 24 -25 was approximately 56 ,500.

And we have not been charging that.

So this slide, although Rich has finished

the detailed apportionment calculations, hasn't finished them yet, for the service charges

for 26 -27.

So far that we believe, as Councillor Sheehan said, that the total income due to the HRA

should be approximately 1 .2 million on a full cost recovery basis.

As the current service charge fee for tenants brings in 319 ,623 and 50p, I believe, this

would equate to an increase of around 937 ,000 per annum.

The team has considered a number of options for implementing service charges.

Obviously, we, you, our councillors, have the option of a full cost recovery increase

from April 2026.

At the moment, though, our early calculations show this might mean an increase of up to

£40 per week for some tenants living in schemes with extensive services.

So this, when we went to Cabinet, wasn't our recommended option, although it is of course

up to members to decide later on when we take the paper back in the autumn.

We did recommend and we do strongly believe that an incremental approach is the best option,

but this could take three to five years to reach full cost recovery, depending on Cabinet

decisions and the consultation outcomes.

With this approach, we can set the increased capped level at £10 a week up to £20 a week.

There are positive and negative reasons for each of these, but we do feel the recommended

option of £15 a week offers the best solution for those tenants that may already be struggling

with their household budgeting.

This slide gives you our reasoning behind why we feel the incremental approach may be

better for some tenants, as it gives them time to adjust to the revised payments.

But in terms of income to the HRA, it will take us longer to get to full cost recovery.

We would get an additional £574 ,000 in year one, with a £10 cap on the increase.

757 ,000 with a 15 pound cap and 871 ,000 with a 20 pound per week cap.

And it means that a small number of tenants will potentially see increases for up to four

to five years if we go on the normal end.

However, the following Cabinet, as Councillor Hsu mentioned, we are launching next week

a major consultation exercise with tenants on all of the options, gaining their opinions

on various aspects of this very important change before any final decisions will be

made later in the year.

Tenants affected.

The housing team have, as I said, considered applying the service charges increasing one

go from April, but the analysis at this stage has shown that the increased disparity over

the charges that are currently being paid by the tenants and the actual cost of the

service in some blocks may cause a significant weekly impact to certain tenants.

Of our 3 ,400 properties, only 1 ,320 of these properties currently pay a service charge.

So that's about 448 in general needs, 286 in what we call age designated, which is essentially

general needs, but just for over 60s, over 55s, and independent living, which is 586

tenancies.

Rich and the team have estimated that about 60 % of general needs tenants that will be

due to pay a service charge will,

and maybe about 25 % of independent living,

25 to 30 % of independent living tenants,

pay their own rent, and so they will also need

to pay their own service charge.

This is, I would stress, a snapshot in time,

as this figure varies all the time

as tenant circumstances change.

Those in receipt of housing benefit

and universal credit, although they will still pay the revised service charge, it will be

covered by their benefits.

It's been suggested by members that the housing team, working with the council benefits team,

as Councillor Shew mentioned, look into a temporary hardship fund of some kind, which

we are looking into now.

We will be looking at all the parameters and the practicalities of applying and offering

some kind of hardship fund to help those tenants

living in blocks with higher service charges

that may not be able to pay the increase.

We don't know what this looked like yet,

but over the next few months

we will be putting that together.

Right, I'm just gonna hand over very briefly to Rich

to take you through these three examples of blocks,

but in a bit more detail.

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 0:38:21

Good evening.

So we've got three examples that I'm going to give you

of what the projected cost will be for blocks next year.

They aren't named blocks,

but just a generalisation so you get a flavour

of what we've got going forward.

So in block one, which is a general needs block,

we've worked out the annual cost

and the annual cost per property.

So they'll have a cleaning charge of 150 pounds a year,

gramme of maintenance, 40 pounds, six pence,

to electric, et cetera.

That works out as an annual cost of 765 pounds, six MP.

That'll then be split out on a weekly basis.

So for the current period,

their charges will work out in 50 weeks.

So this cost will then be apportioned out

rather than 50 weeks.

Yes, sorry, I've still got my screen.

Block two is independent living scheme.

So as you can see, they have a lot more

in terms of actual services.

So they'll have cleaning, girls maintenance,

which a lot of the blocks have,

but then they have communal electric,

and it's quite a high figure, as you can see.

That's because some of their charges will be split out

for some of the tenants will have an electric supply

through our communal supply,

which makes it even more complicated.

On this block there's communal gas,

which is the communal heating.

For the communal parts of the block,

there's wastewater, which would indicate

they have a laundry service,

which you can see later on they do have a laundry service.

Yeah, there's a lift as well,

as it costs associated with the lift.

This is another independent living block.

I'll pull the screen down.

And as you see, it's very similar

to the previous one we've looked at.

There's a little commentary on the right -hand side

which does say about how the gas is applied

and then portioned out.

But it's very much a similar situation

and then there's a total cost per property.

Is there another one? No, perfect.

Gill Butler - 0:41:06

I did press it, but okay.

You're asked to look at the options and the impacts

and our plans for consultation and communication with tenants,

ward councillors, staff and other relevant agencies.

Successful communication will help lessen the financial impact on residents

and elevate any other issues that may arise through the charges.

So, as we mentioned previously,

we will also be liaising with the welfare benefits team

to ensure that this extra support is given to people.

find themselves in financial difficulties.

A full cost breakdown report including the impact tenants and the outcomes of the tenants

consultation will be presented to Cabinet for approval in October November this year.

Each directly affected tenant will receive a letter with their blocks predicted service

charges so they'll have an opportunity for further comments to us before their rent and

service charge increase letter which is the legislative statutory letter that we have

to send them in February.

As you know HRA budgets and rent increases go for approval in February 2026 with a view

to implementation in April 2026.

And I think that's the last of my slides.

So why don't you questions.

Happy to take any questions.

I would also let you all know that Elaine Bostock is here.

She's the chair of the Strategic Tenants Advisory Panel.

She's at the moment going through the consultation questions for us

to make sure that we are giving the right questions for tenants.

But she's also here to talk about anything that you might want to ask her.

Thank you for that.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:43:08

Thank you for the time and the effort that was taking in providing us with a comprehensive

report.

We understand from what we read that this does need to happen, but obviously we all

know that there's a cost of living crisis.

People's wages are not going up.

They don't have more money in their pockets to pay for more bills.

And so it is very much appreciated that you have considered that and have said that it's

going to be an incremental increase.

And it's important for us to have this opportunity to be able to look through this and offer

you what we understand to be things that we can add to improve the process.

So thank you for this opportunity and for all of you to be here for us to be able to

actually ask you these questions to make sure that this is not going to be an easy process

but that we make it as easy as we can.

So I'm sure there's going to be quite a few questions.

We'll start with Councillor Martin.

Cllr Elaine Martin - 0:44:11

Thank you. Thank you for such detail reports.

Very good. You've mentioned it.

I've got three questions really.

The tenants hardship fund.

I just wondered how long that was likely to last and if it was

going to be like a phasing phased out process.

Are any of the blocks like a mixed tenure?

Have you got people that own properties in the blocks

and will that lease charge be proportioned accordingly?

And the consultation with the tenants,

just seems to me that they're going to vote

for the lease increase.

So I don't know, that's obviously going to be a way

of determining the questions in that one.

Thanks.

Gill Butler - 0:44:55

Thank you.

On the first question, I can't really answer the hardship fund because at the moment I

don't know how many tenants it's going to affect.

I don't know the amount of money we might need to put into the budget.

I don't know how it's going to be administered.

So that's definitely something that we're going to be fleshing out over the next few

months.

But when we come back in October, we will have a much clearer picture as to how the hardship fund will work for us.

Second question, you can...

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 0:45:31

We've had all ten into types, yes we do. In the general lease blocks, we do have a small number of lease holders in this year, 205 at the moment.

And there was a scatter about, quite random actually, in the general lease blocks.

Tenants pay a different type of service charge to leaseholders.

There's certain legalities about that.

I don't know how much you want me to go into it.

I could boil you to death if you like.

You've got tenants pay a fixed service charge basically,

whereas leaseholders have a more regulated variable service charge.

So they already pay essentially what the tenants can and will be paying.

and not exactly, but in the same vein.

So the apportionment would be in the same way

and broken down.

So basically everybody pays a fair share of what the costs are.

Gill Butler - 0:46:33

And the third thing,

with regards to the actual consultation questions,

we are trying to word it so that people don't just say,

I don't want to pay anything or I just want to pay 10 pounds.

It is more, and we've got lots of open text boxes.

So we've asked various questions, and obviously we'll get certain answers to those questions,

but people will have the opportunity to qualify their answers and to write more into the questions.

We've had people that know what they're doing with questionnaires go over and over and over it,

So we're quite hopeful we'll get some meaningful responses back.

Councillor Thomas.

Thank you, Chair.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:47:17

Thank you for the report, Gillian, and the information you provided.

So I've got a couple of questions.

In section 1 .11, I think we've already touched on it,

the key thing that we want to know,

and again, Councillor Blakewell, earlier on,

talked about the tail end of austerity.

So I think it's important for us to understand

how many people are likely to be affected by the increased service charges

who are currently on benefits.

Through the consultation, will that be one of the questions

so that you can correctly identify and therefore direct those people

to the excellent team that we have in place

that actually help people with their benefits here.

So that's my first question.

Thank you.

Absolutely, yes.

Gill Butler - 0:48:07

We will be asking people if they are on benefits, but we will be cross -checking, because on

the system we are aware of people that are claiming various benefits.

We're also aware of people that some people go in and out of benefits, as it might work

and then they go back into benefits.

So the income team will be doing a full analysis of those people and we'll be targeting those

people with the second lot of letters.

So we're actually going to be contacting them, speaking to them, saying are you aware that

this is coming and would you like our assistance?

Again if I may, thank you for that.

I appreciate that.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:48:53

And again, the other thing that is a concern is if there's any time lag between the charges

being made and tenants having to pay that and them receiving increased benefits so that

for that period of time between the service charge increase and their benefits increasing,

whether they might be a subset who are likely to want to call on the hardship fund when

Gill Butler - 0:49:25

it's established. The Rents and Service Charges are always applied from the 1st of April 26th.

There are going to be a small amount of people that may tip over the threshold essentially

and that they will then, and it's usually people that are paying their own, it'll be

people that are paying their own currently Rents and Service Charges and it may well

be people that, for instance, are pensioners, perhaps they might not be claiming pension

credits, but they do have a reasonable sized pension, and that might then indicate that

they would need to start claiming pension credits.

So there's all sorts of complexities around that, but again, there's no actual time lag.

The money will be, from day one, required to be paid, and if it takes a while for them

to have a benefit, then that will be backdated to the data

which it was supposed to be paid.

And if I may, just along the same theme,

I'll slow you off just a bit.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:50:28

So just in terms of how that,

so you've identified that there are people

who might be just on the margin,

who might be dipping in and then dropping out,

and then, so I think it's important

that we understand who those people are.

One of the key things that I'd be interested in

is how will this and the availability of the hardship fund,

where is it going to be funded from

and how is it going to be communicated to tenants

so they know and what's the criteria

so that they can access it in a timely manner.

That's my compound question.

As we haven't worked out the parameters of it,

Gill Butler - 0:51:11

I can't really tell you any details about

how it's going to be applied.

There will possibly be some sort of means test

that would normally happen,

how we would apply that sort of thing.

So I will definitely come back with much more information

in October, November, and then after that,

communicate to those individuals that we feel

might want to apply for the test.

I'm on final think if I may, just on the same thing.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:51:45

So our OSC meeting is the 25th of November.

So again, I just wondered whether I could make a recommendation that the report comes

back from the 25th of November, otherwise we'd either have to have a special meeting

to deal with it or we could end up going into 2026, which would be too late with regards

to budget setting and all the things that need to happen downstream.

Thank you.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:52:10

Thank you for that. OK, so Councillor Hills, please.

Councillor Tony Hills - 0:52:15

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your report.

It's a difficult subject. I've got more comments than questions.

I'll let you choose what you want to answer.

But it's a difficult subject, I apologise for that.

It appears we've been getting it wrong for quite some time.

And now the Piper's got to pay for the tune.

So it's tough and it'll be tough on our residents. So I think it's very important that we

communicate to our residents on a regular basis,

prepare the ground for them.

I'm not confident, the moment has happened already.

But we've got to prepare the ground and say look,

we're not trying to make it worse for you than it is, so we've got to try and thread this through this difficult situation.

And in doing that,

I think we've got a couple of things. What are we actually paying at the moment to actually

get outside companies to do various things for us as competitive in -house staff.

Restructure how we work.

If we start charging these things and making our income,

then I think we should look at spending the money to be in -house or to be outside.

I assume we actually buy outside of here because we've had so many problems with staffing and paying for staffing in the council.

So that needs a fresh look I think, is my view.

And also one thing I keep banging on over and over and over,

local government review, you shouldn't.

If we go in by the 28th of November and tell them what we would like to do,

we should know by the spring what they're going to be allowed to do.

And the timescale. Those timescales are very important

because I keep saying we've got three years before we are abolished

or amalgamated or upgraded, whatever you want to do it.

then I think any plan we have to go through should be in that timescale

it's going to get very messily done because if we go through Unitary they might change their minds how they do this

so if I can have that, I think we've got to get it in before we go Unitary

but we should know by the spring I think how it's going to work

so you've got to get your head around the timescales

but they do a great job, it's tough

there's no two ways about it

It's like a cold shower.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Hills.

On the procurement side of things,

Gill Butler - 0:54:41

we do go through an extraordinarily robust procurement

for all of our contracts in housing,

and we are pretty confident that we're getting

the best value of money for our tenants.

With regards to, yeah, the time scales,

Yes, that's another reason why when we went to Cabinet, we recommended a £15 maximum

cap, because that does fall within the full cost recovery within two years, two to three

years is max.

Also, I would say that we are acutely aware of local government reform.

We know that most of our peers have already de -pooled their service charges.

The latest Kent one was strewed. They did that in October 2024.

They did a £12 a week cap at the time.

So there are others out there that have already done this

and we've taken advice from them

and we're hoping to make sure we do it in the right way, as you say.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:55:59

Thank you. Councillor Hookey.

Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:56:03

Good evening. Thank you for the report. Fascinating.

I have a great discomfort with this item, I'm sure many do,

and perhaps Councillor Hills might share comments and questions

as I waffle through.

I forgive any frustration hidden in some of the words.

But I appreciate the complexity of the issue.

Actually, I'll start somewhere else, which is,

I keep hearing the reason to do this, or one of the reasons to do this,

is because everybody else has done it first.

And I just, I don't, there's not good enough reason to do it,

and I just would like to remove that from a vernacular about why we should be doing this.

Learning that we haven't done it yet makes me feel quite proud of that we haven't done it yet.

And so I don't see there's a good enough reason to do it.

It's just a thought.

We jump from $319 ,000 to $1 .2 million.

That's just an astounding jump.

And so I suppose my biggest question is, why the rush?

And when we look at what I perceive

to be a very distinct lack of detail

around the specific number of people who might be affected,

I just know it's hard, and I know

it's maybe impossible to find a clear number.

but just maybe some clarity about how clear can we get

by the time we push go,

or is it all just gonna be based on some assumptions,

or appreciate logical assumptions.

The hardship fund, actually I think Councillor Martin

asked questions, and I know we can't talk

about this hardship fund,

but will the detail that eludes us tonight

be ready for the consultation?

And will residents be aware that there is a hardship fund

to be determined?

And in terms of consultation, we actually had great success in some of our folks to

provide future consultations and how we presented back.

And it's just a bit of a nod to doing how you said we did in terms of feedback, which

is useful to know, in terms of how the consultation presented back.

And then as you probably interpret, I would personally favour a more phased approach given

the impacts.

I think the word used was significant on some residents.

So, if we were then to look at a phased approach,

are there any notable HRA projects that would be delayed or underfunded?

And a consequence would be, therefore,

we're looking at a phased approach instead.

So, yeah, it's a bit of a waffle, but thank you for your time.

Gill Butler - 0:58:22

I'll try and take most of these, Ennio, you gave them.

The reason to do it is because it's the right thing to do.

It's more, it's fair, it's transparent, it holds us to account.

It's what the regulator of social housing wants us to do.

And it meets all of the guidance, the legislative guidance that we follow.

Tenants should be able to hold us to account. Yeah, go on.

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 0:58:55

Yeah, so part of that is also changes in legislation,

or expected changes in legislation, because at the moment,

fixed service charges are very little

in terms of legislations through transparency.

That's expected to change soon,

and the next couple of years.

So if we don't do it now, we will have to do it later on.

So it's not a case of, because other people have done it,

it's because we are last,

and there's going to be change in legislation,

we're going to be forced into doing it,

rather than having a choice, if that makes sense.

So that's also a partner as well.

Gill Butler - 0:59:35

The next thing, we are quite confident we will know which tenants

are likely to be affected and want to apply for the A hardship fund.

We do know quite a lot about our tenants

and we do have quite sophisticated systems

which we can interrogate detailed information about.

We have in the questionnaire as well,

we have asked a lot of questions about people,

whether they answer them or not is of course another matter

that we are trying to gather as much information,

not just about their financial situation,

whether they know where to go for financial assistance,

but also protected characteristics,

whether there's going to be an undue impact

on particular protected characters

or particular parts of the community.

So we're quite confident that by doing this work

over the next nine months, we will be in a position

of knowing who's gonna be impacted.

And it isn't going to be, you've gotta remember

the numbers here, 1 ,300 people currently pay

a service charge.

We have 3 ,400 tenancies.

So we'll be able to whittle it down and down.

We're talking two or 300, maybe, maybe 500.

but the numbers are known, yeah, and becoming scaled.

So yes, residents will be aware

that we are considering a hardship plan.

We have put it in the consultation.

We haven't, of course, said what that might look like yet

because we don't know if they are aware.

The consultation feedback, absolutely, yes.

It's not just about feeding back in the cabinet paper.

It is also about feeding back two tenants.

and we do use the We Said We Did format.

You told us we listened to what your term is.

It will be in our tenant newsletter, we will be talking to people individually

and of course involved in the Strategic Tenants Advisory Panel

heavily in getting the message out to tenants across the next few months.

I think that was it. There was something about delays...

Cllr Rich Holgate - 1:01:51

If we opt for a longer phase,

is there a significant impact as a result of doing that?

Gill Butler - 1:02:00

Yeah, many really.

We have an ambitious new building acquisitions programme,

which we need to get more homes into the HRA.

We need to really reduce our waiting list.

We need to reduce TA, central accommodation.

So there is, that extra 1 .2 million would potentially buy another five flats.

Also decarbonisation, installing energy efficiency measures into our homes is an extremely high

priority for us at the moment.

We've managed to get funding, a social housing decar fund

for the wave one and wave two,

but the funding's run out now.

We've not applied for wave three

because we can't meet the criteria.

So where else is the government funding gonna come?

It's gonna come from our coffers

if we're gonna carry on with decarbonizing our stock.

There are many things that will be impacted

if we can't collect this money.

And if we do go for the £15 cap per week,

then we are looking at some £575 ,000 in year one,

which is half a million,

still a significant amount of money that we could bring in.

Councillor Chapman.

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 1:03:31

Thank you for the report.

I share Councillor Holgate's deep disquiet about this.

I represent Harbour Ward residents there, far from wealthy obviously.

An extra £10, even the minimum, £10 a week, we're talking £40 a month people have got

to find and I appreciate what you're saying in the past that we've been subsidising it,

but that's not the tenant's fault and they've suddenly got to find an extra £40 a month

and that's, I don't know how they're going to do it.

So, and I don't see how we can consult people when we don't know what the safety net, the

hardship fund looks like.

Where's the money coming from?

How long is it going to last?

How easy is it going to be for people to access it?

We cannot consult people effectively if we don't, if we can't tell them what the safety

net is.

That really concerns me.

And those are the most important points.

this last point is a sort of bit more of an aside,

but the electrical safety testing costs

seem enormous to me.

Surely there's a way to get that down.

Gill Butler - 1:04:44

Okay, in terms of, I do take your point, Councillor.

It's in terms of where the money's coming from

for the hardship fund, if we are able to bring in

between 500 ,000 and a million pound extra to the HRA,

that's where the money for the hardship fund

will be coming from.

Will be taking, I don't know, 100 grand or 200

or something like that, I don't know the amount yet,

but we will be taking the money

from the money we're getting in

to cover the hardship fund.

Electrical, I'll have to come back to you on that one.

Was it one of the specific examples

that you felt the electrical was high on?

In all of the examples given, the electrical testing seemed disproportionately high,

and I'm really concerned about that,

because I think if we can get that down, then that has an impact for tenants.

Okay.

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 1:05:39

Yes, under these charges, it was the last year that Mears,

the current responsive repairs contractor,

under TUB, that service,

from this year onwards is a different company,

and I'm expecting the cost to be reduced.

because of that and that's one of the reasons why.

Gill Butler - 1:05:59

We re -tended the contract.

The Mears contract had a number of mechanical and electrical things added into their contract

over the years.

We took them out and we've now gone to specialists and specialists are cheaper.

We're getting the value for money that we hoped we'd get.

Thank you.

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 1:06:23

that's good to know but I mean I still have concerns about the hardship fund, what that

looks like and that we cannot properly consult people if there aren't more details.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:06:33

Thank you.

Councillor Jones.

Thank you.

Cllr Anita Jones - 1:06:39

A difficult subject and yes, it's deeply uncomfortable.

Just a quick one really about the fact that we're obviously clawing back money and the

the cost of recovery of service charges.

How is that going to affect any new tenants?

Are they still going to have to pay

for something which has been recovered?

New tenants, I believe,

Gill Butler - 1:07:04

well, new build tenants pay affordable, don't they,

and the service charge is included, isn't it?

But new tenants coming into these properties

will obviously be, they will have to pay

the servitude charges from the day one.

So they're going to be paying claw back from something which has happened before?

No, because the servitude, we're under collecting.

It's not claw back, it's under collecting.

And also when a lieutenant comes into the property,

we would normally do the financial assessment with them

and they would know the charges for that particular property.

And it would just be rent and servitude charges.

It is still, it is worth mentioning,

and I'll go into the detail here,

but it is worth mentioning that social rent is much lower than affordable rent.

When you add the social rent and these new service charges together,

it still comes in under affordable rent prices.

So we're still offering good -laid money.

That's fine, thank you. I just wanted to understand that.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:08:09

Okay, so I have a few questions.

I understand that this is going to be a really large body of work that needs to be undertaken,

so what I keep on hearing throughout is that there are quite a few unknowns in regards

to who the hardship fund is going to go to, who is on benefits, how much it's going to

cost.

And, you know, I note the point that other people have made about it's really, really

important for all of those things to be fleshed out before we do the consultation so that

people can have all of the information to make an informed decision rather than a decision

where there are some gaps in their knowledge.

One of the things that I'm particularly worried about is that obviously you have made some

compensation for people who have benefits,

but there's always going to be a threshold

where there are people who are not on benefits,

who ordinarily may not need that additional help,

but because of the changes would suddenly get into trouble

and will need that help.

And how are you going to keep account of the changes that

happen to people's finances through this process,

through this transition process?

Is there an opportunity to perhaps have further personnel

available to help people through this process, because there will be things which will come

up during the process, during these changes, where suddenly people will need that additional

help.

And if you do the initial consultation, you make your decisions based on that, and then

people's circumstances change, where is the ability to be able to support them when those

circumstances change?

So is this going to be a one -off, or is this going to be an ongoing sort of monitoring

of the changes in people's circumstances as this process is going on?

The other thing as well is in regards to the elderly and disabled people, do you have an

equality impact assessment in regards to them, and are you going to make sure that when you're

going through that consultation process,

but you have questions specifically to support people

who have those protected characteristics.

Right, what was the other thing?

Oh yes, I've asked you about the transition period,

and I've asked you about the elderly,

and when I remember my next question,

I'll ask you whilst you're answering

the two that I've given you.

Gill Butler - 1:10:46

The consultation is happening now essentially.

We're consulting right the way through.

This first stage of the consultation is just the initial questionnaire.

Obviously, we'll take all that feedback.

But we're not stopping consulting.

When we bring the paper back in the autumn, we're going to be carrying on and honing our

consultation to those that have given us those specific responses where we feel we need to

contact them by letter and go into a bit more detail with them.

And in the final part of the consultation is essentially the statutory requirement that

we send every single tenant a rent and service charge increased letter.

And all the time we're doing that, we're going to have Q &As on the website.

We've got our own housing online that we're going to be looking at as well.

So it's like a constant feed over the next nine months of consultation.

And this is the start of it really.

And the questionnaire that's going out is the first start next week as well.

In terms of people not on benefits, people that pay their own rent and service charge

are obviously, some of those people are going to be people

that we're going to be having these more detailed

conversations in about their budgeting

and their financial situation.

In terms of additional staff, we have,

we are already employing a welfare benefits officer

to sit in a corporate team,

working specifically for the HRA.

So that person is coming in,

we've already been recruited internally,

so they'll be ready to go soon.

And also, Rich is going to be bringing in an admin person

who will also have some skills around making sure

that they talk to residents, talk to tenants

about this service charges coming in.

That person primarily is going to be administering

the actual service charges because, of course,

it's got a major IT to actually get it all started

and get it all running for 1st of April.

So, yeah, we are bringing in additional staff anyway.

In terms of an EIA, yes, we have done initial EIA,

but it was pointed out at Cabinet

that we haven't gone into enough detail around elderly and disabled impacts,

especially around PIP and some of the other benefits.

So we are going to redo that EIA when we take the paper back in the autumn.

Was there another question or have I covered it?

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:13:25

Yes, it was in regards to ongoing support.

So obviously you've got that initial support

that you're given, but there will be changes

in people's circumstances.

It might be up to a year or further.

How are you going to support people?

Gill Butler - 1:13:41

That again is the parameters of the hardship fund.

Yes, we could do a year, we could do two years.

I don't know yet, but if we're looking to full cost recovery,

The sense would be that we would offer something,

the amount might change,

but we would offer something throughout the full term

until we get to full cost recovery.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:14:04

Anybody else?

Yes, Councillor Hills.

Councillor Tony Hills - 1:14:12

I think it's very interesting these discussions people have.

I think we just don't know enough information yet.

to have a firm view on one way or the other.

He appreciates it's going to happen in some way

because other taxpayers in our district are paying for this.

It's nothing for free in this world,

but I think for us to make a more rational judgement

we need to have more information, particularly on time scales.

And I keep going back, I'll have a look at this in the spring,

and I know more what's going on.

So I'm sort of a bit negative on that, but...

Gill Butler - 1:14:52

I'm afraid we have to start from April 2026.

So, I know, but we have to, our rent and service charge increases go through every April.

If we don't do it this April 2026, we will have to wait until April 2027.

We've done a lot of work on this, and I know there are some questions that you're asking

me that I haven't got the answers to, but I promise we will come back with those answers

in the autumn.

Councillor Tony Hills - 1:15:21

Maybe it's an idea then to have them back in again,

sorry, with our officers back in again,

once they have more information for us to discuss.

I think that's crucial.

I just wanted to ask Elaine Cox,

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:15:32

is there anything in particular that you think

you could add to this conversation

that would be of help to us?

SPEAKER - 1:15:42

Thanks.

Well, we've been thoroughly consulted on it as a panel.

We are tenants as well, so it will affect us.

We understand that it will have to happen, that we need more housing for more tenants,

and this does seem a way of getting it,

but it is the amount that will be affecting the tenants

that does concern us.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:16:30

I would... I, and I'll ask the rest of the committee,

I think it would be really helpful to us

to get some ideas from you and your panel

that can be fed back to us to support us

in our decision making if there's a way

to actually relay that information to us

because you are tenants, you are vested stakeholders,

and we want to make sure that we're supporting you

as much as we possibly can.

So if there is a way of you getting some information to us,

that would be really helpful.

Thank you.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:17:05

Right.

Okay.

No more questions?

Okay.

So these are our options.

So to receive and note Report OS 2514, to review the options and impact set out in the

Cabinet Report and feedback comments as part of the commencement of the consultation, and

three, to note that the examples provided in the Cabinet paper, benefits one, are of

projected a service charge breakdown per building and a state for three block schemes.

A full cost breakdown per block scheme will be provided back to Cabinet in autumn 2025

prior to implementation in April 2026.

From what I've heard, I think at this stage we would like to hear a more fleshed out sort

of information and we would really like to see people back here on the 25th of November

with more information so that we feel that we can make a more informed decision in relation

to this.

It's perfectly understandable that the consultation period has already started and that has to

start but we would like to have further information before we make our decisions.

Is that correct?

Yes, Councillor Jones.

Cllr Anita Jones - 1:18:29

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:18:31

As part of where we don't make the decision in this committee, do we?

We have recommendations, and that's what I mean, recommendations.

Cllr Anita Jones - 1:18:36

Yes, it would be really helpful to be able to make recommendations to the Cabinet.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:18:40

Yes.

Okay then.

So can we have the – so to review the options and impact set out the Cabinet report and

feedback comments as part of commencement of the consultation and to make a formal recommendation

for us to return to this on the 25th of the 11th 2025 with further information.

Gill Butler - 1:19:11

We're quite happy to come back to you on the 25th of November and give you the information

you've asked for.

Okay then.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:19:15

Right.

So can we have, I'll be the proposer for that one.

Can we have a seconder, Councillor Hills?

Can we have a vote for a show of hands?

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your time

and your efforts in all of this.

Thank you, appreciate your attendance.

7 Asset Management Strategy

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:19:56

Okay, so we'll move on to item 7, asset management strategy.

This item, I'm not sure who's going to introduce this item now because the person appointed,

oh, so Helen Hunsell will be introducing this item.

Thank you.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:20:25

Thank you.

So here today to talk about the Council's Asset Management Strategy, and that's the

asset management strategy that governs its corporate estate.

It's quite a brief presentation.

I will start off by just giving you an overview of the current position, setting out what

the vision is in the new revised asset management strategy, the corporate assets that the vision

covers, what the objectives are, and then a brief overview of the asset management process,

including disposals.

So the current position is that in 2016, SIPFA actually developed a property asset management

framework for the Council, which includes the old asset management strategy as well

as an asset management plan.

So officers have revised the asset management strategy for the next period, which is for

2025 to 2030, and the AMS will guide the corporate decision making on the Council's corporate

assets.

Officers later in the year will then devise a new asset management plan to support the

in which the asset management strategy is actually delivered.

In relation to the current position, obviously local government reorganisation is a big topic,

and Grant Thornton actually wrote a briefing note in May this year which stated that councils

who are undergoing LGR still need to maintain effective governance effectively over their

estate.

And this basically means we need to avoid undertaking any transactions we wouldn't have

considered if LGR wasn't happening.

And we will continue with a prudent asset management approach, which is business as

usual.

So the vision of the revised strategy is efficient management of the Council's corporate estate,

and that means ensuring our assets are well managed, fit for purpose, compliant, sustainable,

and support our corporate ambitions, in particular growing the economy in a sustainable way.

And we have four classifications of our assets, so we've got those that are used for economic

development and regen, assets for service delivery and operational uses, assets that

are used for our investment return, as well as surplus assets.

And the corporate assets we're talking about are, well, the operational buildings, so the

Civic Centre, for instance, that we're sitting in now, council depots, public toilets and

car parks.

We've got leisure facilities, obviously Hive Pool, all of the beach huts, sports grounds,

the parks, gardens, cemeteries.

We've also got historical assets such as the Royal Military Canal, Martell Hotel, which

is scheduled ancient monuments, as well as Westinghouse Castle, everything else the council

owns at Otterpool as well, all of the land as well as other commercial and residential

stock.

We've got agricultural land, investment assets such as Connect 38, our office building and

Ashford, as well as non -operational land and coastal protection structures.

So the asset management strategy governs the way in which all of those assets are managed.

We've got eight objectives in the new strategy.

I'll run through them quickly.

So firstly, it's about embedding a culture that recognises that property assets are a

key corporate resource.

Managing our portfolio to optimise returns and minimise operating costs.

Thirdly, improve the energy and efficiency of the corporate estate where it's feasible,

including reducing carbon emissions in line with government regulations.

Number four, inevitably using property assets in partnership with others to improve our

district.

That links to number five, supporting economic and growth and regeneration in the district,

as well as supporting the district in meeting its housing needs.

Objective 7 and 8 are around compliance, so ensuring we're compliant with all current

health and safety requirements, as well as making sure we're compliant in relation to

Section 123 of the Local Government Act, which I'll touch on in a bit more detail in a bit.

So as part of the strategy, the Council will only want to continue to invest, maintain

and manage and retain its assets which will increase capital value and generate further

revenue.

This includes officers managing the portfolio in line with the Council's corporate aims

as well as the statutory compliance I touched upon which includes agreeing leases, licencing

and repairing and maintaining our corporate assets.

It may also involve acquisitions, which support priorities in the Council's strategic plans,

as well as disposals.

So if assets are no longer required, we may need to dispose of them to unlock their capital

value, and disposals must be in line with Section 123 of the Local Government Act.

That basically means that the council has the power under this Act to dispose of assets,

but it needs to be at a consideration that should not be less than the best that can

be reasonably attained unless we're granting short -term leases or also, as it says on the

slide, we do have the power to dispose of assets for less than market value if there

are defined reasons linked in with economic and social well -being benefits

to the local community that we can prove. Within the wider pack this disposal

flow chart is produced so I'm sure you've had a chance to read it I won't go

through the detail here it says how we go about doing it. And finally next steps

we welcome feedback from yourselves today planning to take the strategy to

cabinet in September to hopefully get that ratified and implemented with the asset management

plan.

I mentioned to be drafted later this year and implemented by April next year.

Okay, again, thank you so much for a comprehensive report and creating a presentation for us.

That always makes things a little bit easier to understand.

Okay, Councillor Holgate.

Thank you very much for the call.

I think the recommendations to feedback.

One feedback I have is that eight objectives are too many.

I struggle to understand how that would help provide focus

and what we would do to satisfy eight things may make that more difficult.

I'd love to see one objective personally, which I probably know is not possible,

but ultimately is to protect as many assets from being stripped by any new unitary.

But I know that might not be possible to put in so many words.

So I think within that, how we can ultimately maybe unlock process or speed of process

so we can move quickly around our assets and we move assets to town councils or so forth.

I know that's not the point and the only thing to think about,

but it's anything I wake up at night thinking about.

In terms of questions, perhaps it's maybe satisfied by the workflows,

apologies if it is, but in terms of whether an asset is retained

for community benefit or disposed of for financial return,

how transparent and public is that process and framework

in helping make that decision?

That is really my main curiosity. Thank you.

In relation to compressing the eight objectives, I'm happy to go back and have a look at that.

I think some of them link in with each other anyway, so they could probably be tightened

up.

In relation to disposing of assets, I know recently we did dispose of an asset.

it was to the Lee's lift company, so yeah, there would have been a market value to that,

but because of the reasoning behind it, we transferred it to them at nil value.

But to do that, we went through a really thorough process.

We went to cabinet to get their approval, so I would say we are pretty transparent

in the way we're dealing with those sorts of disposals.

And, sorry, I'll just quickly mention as well,

as part of the asset management strategy,

there is a disposals procedure that's been developed.

That didn't come out in the packs, but that's operational,

which is what officers will use

when they're working through the disposals process.

Yes.

Thank you. Is that publicly available?

Would be be able to see it online and understand.

I'm not sure if it will be publicly available.

I know the old one was, but I can come back and confirm that to you.

Okay.

Sorry, Jay. I know that we had a briefing note.

How legally bound are we to have a briefing note?

given LGR, are we just stuck where we're at now because of that briefing note in LGR?

Or do we have opportunity to move assets around?

As far as I'm aware, we can't do anything that we wouldn't have done before if LGR wasn't happening.

So, yeah.

We can't operate willy -nilly, I don't know.

It has to be...

If there's a reason to dispose of something,

you'll have to follow a thorough process,

which will potentially be quite detailed, I would have thought.

Just to come back on the disposal procedure,

you said it was originally publicly available, the previous one.

Is there a reason why the new one isn't going to be made publicly available?

I just don't know the answer to that.

You don't know the answer to that.

And is it possible for that disposal procedure to come back to the OSC

so that we can have a look at it and scrutinise it?

Especially in LGR, I think that is going to be a very, very important procedure

because that is going to be happening a lot with that, with the process of LGR.

Subject to timings, yes, but I might need to confirm that as well.

Right, OK. Thank you.

Councillor Chapman. Oh, sorry, did you want to say something about that?

Yes, of course. Sorry, Councillor Chapman.

Mr Ewan Green - 1:31:36

I appreciate the comments and the questions around LGR asset transfer as a disposal.

I think, in a nutshell, anything we do is business as usual at the moment.

that's reflected in the strategy and their procedures.

As LGR, I guess we move towards that position

and further guidance notes come from government

around how we treat disposals, then,

perhaps it's certainly there will be some new rules

wrapping around that potentially,

but at the moment it's business as usual,

which refers back into our asset management strategy

and the procedures that we undertake.

Some of the processes we have in the background

are operational, so we wouldn't bring them

to members for agreement.

Really what we're looking for members through this process is about the strategy and the

direction and the objectives being set, which is what we've got for you tonight.

So I think it's a really, really valid question to ask and certainly one which I know our

Town and Parish Councils are very keen to talk and can continue to talk to us about.

So no doubt this will come back before members at some point as we move through the LGR process.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:32:39

Yes, but the point I want to make, obviously, if we are carrying on as business as usual,

with others of LGR, if the previous disposal procedure was public, then the new one should

Mr Ewan Green - 1:32:50

be public as well if it's business as usual.

And I'll just stay on the rule.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:32:53

Okay, excellent, thank you.

Councillor Chapman.

Thank you for the report.

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 1:32:59

Forgive me if this is a really stupid question, but I'm really struggling to get to grips

with what constitutes surplus assets.

On the paper I'm looking in front of me, that seems to include Llanda Otterpool, but then

And in the presentation, Otipool was a separate category.

So if you could be really clear about what surplus assets are, I'd be really grateful.

Thank you.

No, that's, you're welcome.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:33:25

That's a good question.

Otipool is actually an investment asset.

But surplus assets, for instance, we have various parcels of land which we don't actually

have a use for.

So obviously for Ossipool it's earmarked for development of a new town, but we have other

areas of land that don't have a use identified with them that fits into any of those other

categories.

So then potentially they could be disposed of.

A lot of it is small value stuff that we're holding.

Thank you.

So it would be good to have some more detail on that

and how those pieces of land are defined as a surplus.

Thank you.

Do you have anything that you can say on that?

You'll follow that up, okay, thank you.

Councillor Joanna.

I guess it links in with what we're saying

about surplus pieces of land.

Cllr Anita Jones - 1:34:28

I know as a high Councillor, there's lots of little bits

of land within town council land, which, and I would hope through the process of going

towards local government reorganisation that perhaps those bits would be looked at.

There's some really random little parts.

I know that obviously there was a really useful thing a few years ago where some of the play

areas were passed over to the town and with some money to invest in them, and that's been

a really positive thing.

So I would really welcome, actually, the council looking at those little plots of land and

how they can work with the town and parish councils to actually make it work for the

towns and the parishes and the communities in a better way.

Because I say I'm aware of little strips of land right in the middle of town council land

and none of us know really why that was ever parcelled up like that.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:35:20

I know and sometimes we don't either actually.

It's history. But yeah, no, but I'm sure we can look at that.

Because we're always certainly interested in getting rid of the land that we don't need to look after

and somebody else could look after in a better way.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:35:40

And I know that obviously this is going to happen a lot where we will sort of veer into LGR territory,

but it is important and please note, you know, there will be multiple times when people start

talking about LGR because parish is towns and a lot of us are on parish and town councils

are concerned about it and this is actually a very pertinent and appropriate time to be

talking about it.

Okay, so Councillor Thomas.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 1:36:13

Actually, Councillor Jones just asked the first part of the question that I was going

to ask.

So my question in regard to that is,

with these surface assets,

how are they currently being utilised?

And as importantly going forward,

what opportunities do we have to improve this utilisation

to the benefit of residents specifically allocated,

sorry, specifically to those that are within

town and current town and parish boundaries,

council boundaries, thank you.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:36:47

I might need to go back and look at the list of how we've defined the surplus assets.

Again, it's subjective, and that's an exercise that SITFA undertook in 2016.

But I suppose when we talk about surplus assets, it's easy for people to get excited and think

there is a lot of opportunity for maximising value out of these assets.

But believe me, a lot of these aren't very exciting.

and the ones that are, we will have worked with others to transfer.

But I'm more than happy if I'm permitted to talk to you about it

separately to discuss what they are and the opportunities there are.

Thank you very much. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

So you may well find that we are far more excited

Cllr Paul Thomas - 1:37:36

about certain pieces of land in New Romney

and I'm sure Anita would say in Hyde as well.

So, yeah, for us to have that breakdown

and then understand what possibilities

and have that feedback from Town and Parish Councils,

particularly as we look at moving forward with LGR

and the potential for the disposal of those through that,

we could be very, very helpful, actually.

Thank you.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:37:59

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:37:59

Councillor Holgate.

Cllr Rich Holgate - 1:38:02

Yeah, sorry, I just want to go,

not to keep banging on about LGR,

but I think you mentioned it's business as usual.

and I suppose I get the intent of what you're saying,

however I disagree, there is an inevitability about LGR

that will have an impact on our atomists.

And I therefore think if we are here to provide feedback on the strategy,

I would love to have seen something in the strategy

that directly acknowledges that inevitability

and what we are doing between now and point X,

which I know we don't know yet,

and to... we're not just transferring all those type of things,

but otherwise protect and optimise our assets with LGR in mind.

So, again, coming back to the objective and feedback on objective,

I think there's a real opportunity to be more explicit

that with the lens of LGR, we are doing this,

or we want to do this with our assets.

And tied in with that and how we can have an objective

that is, again, explicit of how we can include parish and town councils

in all conversations or as many as possible

with the assets without overwhelming your inbox, I'm sure,

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:39:11

But again, just a real encouragement there, but I hope it's useful.

I appreciate that. I agree as well.

But I think from officers' perspective, when the strategy was revised,

there is limited information from central government at the moment

about how assets if and will be transferred to towns and parishes.

So it's difficult for us to put in our strategy

the approach we will take until we know what that is.

Cllr Rich Holgate - 1:39:39

But we can still signal intent, you know, and anyway, maybe I'm on mercy now, so I'll stop.

But yeah, okay, thank you.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:39:47

I can raise it then.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:39:50

Councillor Thomas.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 1:39:53

Sorry, could I just show my ignorance here actually.

So what does SIPF first stand for please?

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:39:57

I knew you'd ask that.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:40:01

Have you forgotten?

I don't actually know off the top of my head. I wasn't here then. Hands up.

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accounting.

Yeah, Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accounting.

P 'amei.

Dr Susan Priest - 1:40:25

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.

CIPFA.

Councillor Hills.

Councillor Tony Hills - 1:40:37

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation.

I've always had a problem with the phrase surplus assets,

because they're not surplus.

If you've got a play area in a parish and people are playing in it,

it's only been made surplus because it's been locked up

because they can't afford to maintain it.

So that's not surplus, it's just a case of

can we offload responsibility onto somebody else?

I used to worry about this a lot when I used to be a town councillor in Lyd.

I think I was offered four play areas before Covid.

It was like looking at a gift horse in the mouth,

because you would watch it, it still got teeth.

It doesn't feel right to me.

A lot of slang came over in 74 when they got to the borough councils

and they formed a district council and I'm old enough to remember this

and a lot of this land, I'm not going to give them my charity to have a church by the bar

as well as our parishes, it went to Shepway

and of course some things are good and some things are bad

but I've heard some rumours going around, I might be wrong, that some of the assets

if the parish council don't want to buy them they might be sold privately

to maximise their income. That worries me a lot.

So again, I've come back to it, I'm sorry about this, there's a lack of clarity to me.

Particularly when it comes to local government review, I can't mention it once, but you're quite right.

Thank you.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:42:17

I'm also inclined to agree. The definition of surplus is subjective.

So when SIPFAR undertook their review and classified the assets,

it was actually easy for people to have different opinions about what they were.

But principally it becomes surplus in our classification when we can't fit in with the others.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:42:52

Any other questions?

Okay, so I just wanted to ask, so we've got the asset management strategy.

Are you going to do a sort of reevaluation of what the assets are through the use of

this strategy?

So in regards to the surplus and the economic development and so on, what exactly are you

going to be providing to Cabinet in September 2025?

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:43:24

We were planning on presenting just the strategy itself so that that can be sanctioned by Cabinet.

And then in relation to, you know, suggestions about looking at asset classification again,

that's potentially something that come through the asset management plan.

So that's what officers will write later this year, beginning of next year,

to show how we're going to implement the strategy.

OK. And will that come back to OSCE once that has happened?

The plan? No, because it will be a delivery piece

for officers to use to deliver the strategy.

Right. OK.

Mr Ewan Green - 1:44:04

But I think the feedback from members to make, very helpful,

and how we shape that plan and how that's presented moving forward.

So, everything, all the feedback tonight is very welcome

and will be taken on board as we move forward

from the strategy into the action plan and the management plan.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:44:21

Okay.

My brain is ticking away in regards to the fact

that we have spent a lot of time talking about this

and talking about LGR and surplus assets

and different types of assets

and how this is so important to the district,

you know, the town, the parish councils, and so on.

And that's why I was asking if it will come back,

because obviously it will feed into

what some of the town and district councillors

will be doing in regards to identifying

what the assets are and the assets

that maybe they will be requesting

from the district council.

And that's why I was asking if it is something

which we could bring back to OSE if it is appropriate.

And of course if the other committee members

agree on it as well.

Folkestone & Hythe Officer - 1:45:15

If it was appropriate for it to come back,

then I'm sure it can.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:45:22

Does anyone have anything they want to add?

Councillor Jones.

Cllr Anita Jones - 1:45:26

I'm just aware that we have a huge programme

for our overview and scrutiny this year.

and if we keep bringing items back, it's going to make our agendas very long.

Obviously we feedback our dues and then Cadmet take that on board.

So I think that's the process for me, that they should be listening to us.

Unless it's really crucial it needs to come back,

I think we've given some quite useful feedback.

Councillor Hills.

I think Anita Jones wants more meetings.

Councillor Tony Hills - 1:45:57

Oh, that's a shame.

I've got some spare time.

But I think it's important if we do a proper job in this,

we should go back.

I think you're right, Chair.

I get uncomfortable if we say, okay, we look at this,

and now it goes on to the officers and to cabinet

and it goes into the machines, whatever.

So if it needs to come back, it should do.

Thank you.

Any other points?

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:46:24

Okay, Councillor Thomas and then Councillor Chapman.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 1:46:32

I think it's important that we differentiate between strategy and us reviewing that.

If you look at what's been presented, and one of the things that's included in the paper

is the alignment between this and the approved corporate plan that we have, and that alignment

exists.

I think that the next stage is the operational stage and maybe that's not for us to take

on board here.

We've been asked about the strategy, is it right up here in terms of what the council

is proposing to do and I think generally, I know Councillor Holgate had some views about

the objectives for example which we've already had feedback to say that there could potentially

be condensed to a point where they're more easily readable than the other things

Councillor Holgate identified. But again I'd certainly be happy for this to go

forward without it coming back to us because again I think it is we're

then tending into the operational, more into the operational side of things so

that's just my opinion, thank you chair.

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 1:47:43

It may turn out to be a tiny and very boring set of assets that come under surplus assets

and maybe we're not interested in them but until I know what they are I can't really

feel that we've scrutinised them. So without that kind of information and how that's been

categorised I feel it has to come back.

Councillor Hallgate.

Cllr Rich Holgate - 1:48:03

My view is I'd love to scrutinise everything.

Things are a question of priority and I think therefore it's probably not worth any more

of this committee's time with the view that we will be focusing on other arguably more

important areas.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:48:20

Councillor Martin.

Cllr Elaine Martin - 1:48:22

Yes, previously there's just been a sort of written feedback to the committee, so sort

some details that actually come back to the committee rather than representing the report

and getting it covered that way.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:48:39

Cllr John Wing - 1:48:41

I would actually be tempted to agree with Councillor Thomas. I think this has come to

us as a strategy and if we agree with the strategy, I know I fully understand about

and have bits and pieces within it.

But this is what we're scrutinising tonight.

I think you've given some good feedback.

I've been sitting in this chair for quite a while and I'm fully aware, and I know Jake is as well,

what a full strategy we've got and we haven't got room to start putting things in extra.

As Councillor Hill said, we want extra meetings.

It's up to us really.

But if we're going to fully scrutinise everything coming in front of this committee,

we need time to do it. And if we keep putting in the time now,

we're going to go, we speak now, which is fine,

but we must be aware of this commitment to fully scrutinise something.

It must be programmed in things. And that's my opinion anyway.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:49:38

Okay, so the point I was making is that I know that this is crucially important.

At this stage, I'll use that acronym again because of LGR.

And I know that parish and town councillors would be appreciative of us actually taking

the time to do this.

It's not, yes, of course, it's additional work, but it is crucial work.

That is my understanding of it.

But I have sort of been taking a sort of mental vote as people have been speaking, and it

It does seem like it's not a majority view and that's absolutely fine.

That's why we have a committee.

The committee makes the decision, not one person or two people or whatever.

So that's fine.

So if there are no other points to make.

Nope.

Okay.

So we are point one to receive a note report OS2515 and to provide feedback to officers

is a priority assessment management strategy being submitted for cabinet approval in September

2025.

And that's what we're voting on.

We have a proposal, Councillor Thomas, a seconder, Councillor Martin and a vote for a show of

hands.

Okay then, thank you very much.

8 Equitability of council resource across the district

And we move on to our last item, eight, equitability and council resources across the district.

Mr Ewan Green - 1:51:08

and this will be introduced by Ewan Green, Director of Strategy and Resources.

Thank you very much, Chair, and apologies for your third presentation of the evening and I know it's pushing on.

And a very interesting topic, thank you, this is part of the work plan for the committee that you set at the start of the year.

So what I'm going to run through, I think, is a number of slides just positioning this topic, really.

This is not about this presentation drawing conclusions for you.

Very keen to hear your views that we can feed back into the cabinet and corporate leadership team

in terms of the equitability of resources across the district and your views on how that is shaped.

So in terms of the background, there's the detail in terms of the question itself.

couple of things I would say just in terms of presenting, you know this is about context and

giving quite a high level pass and overview of some of the key issues that underpin this topic.

In terms of some of the detail in relation to planning, growth and housing, I've touched on that in

the presentation, there's a specific comment there around the new public swimming pool to serve

in the western part of the district.

I say to members I haven't included that in the presentation

because that's something which will come through

in an emerging leisure support and leisure strategy

that we're working up, which will come before you

in due course as we move forward.

So again, this is a presentation here

about providing context and information

for you to consider and discuss the matter.

So in terms of what we're gonna cover,

Can a high level pass about the district, the Council's profile, types of services,

and I appreciate things that you will know, you know, you're elected members, you understand

the Council, you'll know this already, but I think important just to have a bit of context

in there.

Touch quite a bit on some of the services and projects, because it is quite, I think

you see from the presentation, you can draw a distinction between things that are district -wide

and then also thematic and geographic.

To talk a little bit about how we're engaging with communities and crucially as well at

the end touch on the role of partnerships across the district as well.

So in terms of district profile, you'd be familiar with the map and I guess a couple

of points to draw out of this really is the kind of urban and rural split that we have

in terms of where our households are, 67 % in urban,

33 % in rural.

And another point that is quite relevant to some

of the grant funding and some of the projects

that we deliver, which come later on,

is that government use these indices

of multiple deprivation.

So they're government metrics.

So we are defining where the highest levels of pocket

deprivation are within council areas.

And certainly when it comes to government funding, it's usually at SL1, the highest

level where a lot of resources are targeted to.

And you can see that generally our highest areas are in the more urban areas of Folkstone

North Central Folkstone.

Although, that does not mean that other areas don't have a need for funding at all.

but I think it's important just to highlight on this one,

I think it captures quite neatly

that some of the highest level of draws on resources,

particularly from the council,

are in some of the more urban areas.

And the quick, the council profile,

I think a fairly obvious one,

but just to reiterate again,

we have a set of statutory services

that we have to provide as a council.

And that's where a significant focus

and the amount of our resources goes to.

But we have a number of discretionary services

as well that we know.

And I think in here, just highlighting again,

things we have to do, things that we can

do on a discretionary basis.

But when it comes down to how we allocate against these,

that very much is about the corporate plan

and the action plans that go behind that.

And certainly in some of the discretionary services

in promoting economic development,

nobody would say that's not important.

So this is not a slide that says that some things are

more important than others, but in statute,

what the council's real focus has to be for its resources

is around the statute of services

on the left -hand side of the table there.

So again, just touching on the council,

So you'll know that our priorities are allocated through the corporate plan, which is to be

by members and the budget -setting process each year.

And I think the important part of this also to add into that is with the corporate plan

is an action plan, which is actually the doing bit.

What are we doing about the priorities and how are we delivering against the priorities?

And that is an annual process, and that's one of the important changes that came through

developing this new corporate plan that every year we will bring forward to members a revised

set of actions to meet the priorities.

And that has to align with the budget setting process also.

And you'll also know, of course, the Council has been through a difficult period in the

budget setting.

We've had a number of significant exercises to look at how we can manage within reduced

budgets to arrive at our medium -term financial strategy, MTFS, and ensure we have a balanced

budget.

So, you know, this idea of having the corporate plan has to be aligned with budget setting

and resources that we do have available.

Most of our resources, it says, they are actually functions.

And importantly as well, whilst we have our council resources, we do always seek opportunity

for grant funding to augment what we're doing or do additional activity.

And certainly a lot of that, as you'll see through the presentation, can either be thematic

or geographic based.

And so in terms of the council, a slide there that shows the three main delivery departments

of the council, finance, strategy and resources and housing operations.

And the numbers of people in here probably reflect the scale of the services that are

being delivered.

And you can see housing operations, certainly

with housings, with our regulatory services,

housing, has a higher number of staff.

That doesn't mean to say these services are more important,

just reflects the scale and the allocation of resources

into some of these more statutory functions.

And this slide just, I think, given a bit of context

in terms of the council's overall funding.

You can see our revenue budget's capital,

and then the housing revenue claim, the HRA,

is its revenue budget and its capital.

And of course, in this slide, you

can see that from the average council

tax band D, for example, on the pie chart there,

you can see that the council's income from that is 13%.

to heal.

It is not the largest share of the council tax.

And that's not a comment about how council tax should

be allocated.

It's merely a fact about our council resources

are in quite a tight envelope.

And room for manoeuvre there.

There isn't significant room for manoeuvre

in increasing what we do.

Another source of funding for the council's community

infrastructure led or CIL as you know and just an example there of where funds were

allocated in the 23 -24 financial year. This is a year behind the could we publish the

figures retrospectively but just gives you an idea of where some additional set of funding

that comes into the council on the back of development and planning, sorry housing and

development across the district. Importantly, I think, recently when we did bring, last

year we got a report on SIL 2 over the Inscripting Committee, and one of the key bits of feedback

was that we request to have greater member engagement in the allocation of SIL, and that's

something we've taken on board and recently reported to the Cabinet a new process that

will mean that there will be enhanced opportunities for members across the Council to have a better

and then put forward opportunities and ideas for how CIL should be spent.

CIL has got some tight boundaries around it

in terms of it's there to support infrastructure,

which is under pressure potentially on the back of development,

but certainly I think the point was very well made by members

that they would like a greater involvement in how that's allocated.

So moving forward, certainly,

and that will happen in the coming months.

Also, it's important to note that we do pass 15 % of our civil income to Town and Parish

councils where development at that proper scale to which it still applies has undertaken.

And that's just an example there of in 20C24 how funds were targeted at specific areas

across the council, across the district area, sorry, albeit it has to accord with where

development happens.

So into more of a discussion about the services and projects that we do deliver, and this

first slide I think just neatly captures on the first five bullet points our core business

of the Council, our core statute of functions through waste, revenue and benefits support,

for housing, planning, regulatory services.

And you can see, particularly in housing,

I know that as our HRE business plan has come forward,

and certainly with the direction from members on that,

the housing team very much focused

on looking for opportunities across the district.

You can see a number of units that are coming forward there,

in Foulston, Biggins Wood, for example.

But in the pipeline, importantly,

we can wider across the district,

particularly areas of end -image near a mea hive, which are challenging at times to find

development opportunities or house builders or house building, but certainly it's one of the

tenets of the HRA business plan to look across the district. So that encapsulates our core services,

if you like, at one level, but dropping down the level into other district -wide services.

You can see there's a focus on engagement and delivery of grant schemes and programmes.

Again, grant scheme is one the council has run, which is a new scheme that's come forward

this year and has been oversubscribed significantly from across the district.

And I think that's important that we have had a number of schemes coming forward which will be approved very soon.

I'm happy to provide members of the committee an update on that in due course when the awards are published.

But you'll see that is certainly across the district.

And the UK Share Prosperity Fund, a fund that we deliver on behalf of government,

and you can see the figures there and the types of interventions there that would apply to anybody across the district who is in need of these services.

And moving on to the other side of delivering projects and services of course is more thematic services and projects and largely these are driven by grant funding opportunities,

not necessarily solely focusing on grants and opportunities,

but some good examples here,

starting at the top with the very significant £22 million

brighter future project in Folkestone,

with government grants through Coast Drive in the Marf area,

with a significant grant from what was the NDA or Magnox.

And again, the rural England Prosperity Fund,

a very similar fund to the UK Prosperity Fund,

it was an add -on to that,

but it was focused on rural areas only.

So there's an example of a grant fund

that we are delivering on behalf of government,

which is targeted in a very specific geographic basis,

not in the urban areas, but in the rural areas.

And again, just moving on, more examples of

projects and services that reflected in our operational plans or in the corporate plan.

And you can see it's not just about significant and major grant funding schemes.

The Council has support in the GeoPart designation across the Downs for example.

Tree planting schemes across the district.

We held our first full council meeting, which we held outside of Folkestone, in the Marsh Academy.

So there are a number of other activities that we do that aren't necessarily...

sorry, that are geographic and spreading our reach across the district.

And moving forward, one of the points of the initial question, I think, from here as a

committee was how are we engaging, how do we know what our residents and communities

need across the district?

And there's quite a lot of work in this that we do on behalf of members.

Through the corporate plan, there is certainly a real stronger focus for the council now

on engaging. You can see there, particularly in the second bullet point, there's been a

number of forums established on a thematic basis or a geographic basis to have that conversation

locally and elected members have the opportunity to meet and talk about local issues and then

bring them back into the council for consideration to members linking in with portfolio holders,

for example.

And when we're looking at economic strategy and support

and leisure strategy, two very, very important parts

of how we want to position the district,

and you talk about LGR, for example,

these are two documents that really well set out

the priorities for the district moving forward.

These will be documents that will be engaged and consulted

on across the patch.

So this won't, you know, it won't be an economic strategy whilst many of the opportunities

might be in the folks in the area, it will not be a folks centric piece of work, it definitely

will be something that we engage across the district on to ensure that the priorities

in our rural areas are reflected as strongly as in the urban areas.

And again, just how are we engaging, supporting?

Remember, war grants is an obvious one,

they definitely are geographically split

across the district.

But also in the general fund,

we have a range of projects in 25, 26

and the current budgets and the approved budgets

that we are supporting, the council is supporting.

And some examples are there.

And that's one area in the past

where members have expressed a view

about some further dialogue on the allocation of community grants in the future, sums of

money that are in the budget under community.

We tended to have been rolling on from previous projects or standard ways of supporting some

existing projects, but certainly I think as we get into budget setting, a conversation

around how that fund is allocated would be beneficial and indeed I think the Financing

Funds Subgroup a couple of years ago had a bit of a deep dive into our community grants

and how they're allocated.

We certainly work across the district in a range of partnerships, some district wide,

Our Waste Collection Service, of course,

there's the Dover District Council,

the Community Safety Partnership,

district -wide bringing together,

although there may be some projects that are dramatic coming from it.

But there's also some geographic partnerships.

There's only Marsh Partnership, which is one that has

been in place for quite some time now,

and there's a really vital link

into the decommissioning process

for Dunginess,

linking back into the Neecro Decommissioning Authority

the opportunities for investment and grant support to mitigate the impact of the loss

of the two stations there.

So whilst we have a number of services we deliver to our budgets, we're also working

very hard with other organisations and partners to deliver across, or to guide them to deliver

across the district.

So I guess I'm counting through this.

In summary, you know from our conversations around budget setting and resources are limited,

so that deployment between statutory and non -statuary is really quite important, linking into the

and the budget setting, and that's member led.

That's a really important point here.

Members set the direction, set the priorities, set the budget,

and John was off -source as to go and deliver

against these priorities.

In getting to the conflict plan, this time our consultation,

I think, is very significant.

So certainly, I would be confident in saying

that issues that were raised through the consultation process

were certainly brought back in for consideration

in terms of shaping the plan, the corporate plan and priorities, and very much through

the cross -party member working group we had in place to guide that process.

I guess that this presentation is not about drawing conclusions.

It's really just about, I hope, providing you some context and some background to have

a discussion about the equitability of resources and provide feedback that I'm very glad to

I'd be very happy to take feedback into Cabinet and the corporate leadership team

if there's some areas that you wish us to focus, to raise further,

to consider during budget setting, etc.

So, I have also suggested a couple of videos you may want to consider feedback on,

but I'm very happy, Chair, to listen more than anything else to this piece

and very keen to get your views.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:11:25

Excellent. Thank you so much.

And I'm surprised that I'm actually saying this,

But that was a really interesting presentation.

And I learnt a few things that I wasn't familiar with.

And just to reiterate, this was provided for us so we could get a better understanding

of how the assets or all the resources are spread across the district.

We're not voting on this.

We are just going to provide.

It's an opportunity to discuss and to provide some ideas.

and that's it, there's no vote.

Okay, Council Colgate.

Cllr Rich Holgate - 2:12:02

Hi, thanks so much for putting that thought on.

I'm mindful of time, so I'll try to be brief.

I was trying to remind myself of the exam question

as you were going through the presentation,

and I just reminded myself, so members are invited

to consider the presentation and raise any points

of feedback to the cabinet.

I think what I'm struggling is that I don't understand

what question we're trying to answer,

and I feel we're trying to answer maybe two things.

Are we trying to answer what the council does

or where it does it.

And I think you're trying to answer both,

but in trying to answer both, we answer neither,

in particular, focused detail.

And so I think because of that, where

I struggle with the presentation is there's

no actual analysis, therefore, of whether the distribution

of work is equitable.

For example, there's no per capita spend or ward

by ward breakdown, for example.

And there's no out like we talk a lot about the projects

that are done, but less about the impact of those projects

to create better equitability, which is a word I want to struggle to keep saying.

So there's no criteria for example of how geographic priority is a set of balance.

I think I get why ward budgets are all the same per...

The amounts are the same for every ward budget,

but actually my question is should they be?

If there is actually demonstrable inequality,

no, sorry, inequitability in the district,

should we therefore be weighting the water budget differently?

It's maybe an open question perhaps.

And so therefore, I know the conclusion

is left to members.

But I think in absence of some of that detail,

there's probably left too much to interpretation.

And I think what might help the presentation is, again,

is the visuals of how, again, the district visual

is amazing.

I'd love to actually know where those projects are

on a heat map basis or a pinpoint basis against the distribution of those projects or where they are.

Just again to help visualise again the spread of projects and therefore hopefully impact.

So again I think the report is very interesting and there's hugely,

there's some of the visuals of the pie chart, I think we should tell the public about that,

there's great education there.

But as to a greater understanding of equitability in the council,

I may be being a little critical and I'm wrongful,

but I don't know whether I'm more informed

as a result of the presentation than I was coming into it.

So I hope that's useful.

Mr Ewan Green - 2:14:30

No, very useful and I'd agree with you.

I think we were challenged a little bit in bringing this subject matter forward.

For example, we do not break down our budgets at ward level.

I can't tell you how much per capita spend you have per individual and per words.

We don't run the business that way and we would never have that data.

I think one of the points I think members in this previously came through the OSC process

was trying to understand how are issues raised and how do members understand,

and how do we engage locally to understand what needs and aspirations there are from communities

and how is that fed back in and considered for any action?

Which is, I think, something I was trying to articulate a bit in terms of the engaging sides and how we do that.

But I take your point completely about it's very high level and doesn't allow you to deep dive into, say,

the word equitability into its level.

I think the point about heat maps is quite interesting as well. I don't think there's a problem with us presenting some information

back to you just around plotting some of this. But I do think this is a really

difficult one for me to present on because it is quite a

fairly high level question for a fairly

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:16:02

So, I think that's a really good point that you made there.

Cllr Elaine Martin - 2:16:16

Okay, so it's Councillor Martin next.

Thank you for the report.

There was just a couple of things.

I totally agree with Shtib.

Sorry.

Well, we're trying to decide whether or not we're going to do it.

I was calling Councillor Holgate, oh Richard, about the graph on page 8 with the council tax breakdown.

I just like a picture that talks a thousand words, isn't it?

I think that was really useful and I think we should be putting it out wider.

And on that same point I think we need to improve communications around this,

about how the money is spent, distributed and to make people feel included.

If you're down in Romley Marsh, everything seems to be spent around the urban area.

I know two -thirds of our population is in the urban area.

But it's people like Marshall up in North Downs,

that I think it's all down in Folkestone.

They need to feel that it's been fairly used around the district.

I think you mentioned on one of the things that the council meeting was held outside of the Civic Centre.

It's only been done once and is there any opportunity to do it again but maybe in a different area,

so not go back to the Marsh Academy.

But I mean it was a great location and there's nothing wrong with the Marsh.

But I think spreading it around the district is my point.

So, the other thing is there's no mention, I know it's not in our control about the bus services,

but I only know about North Downs, and if you want to go into Canterbury, or come into Folkestone,

you can't get back, so if you want to go to the cinema or in Canterbury, you can't get back to where you come from,

so you've got to take the car.

And also we had a use it or lose it campaign and I just wondered if you had any idea of how successful that was.

Again I know it's not district council but there's been a lot of discussion with stagecoach about busses.

Mr Ewan Green - 2:18:31

On the last point, no but I'm certainly find out, certainly will, in terms of the use it or lose it scheme.

I think it's a really good point you're making about the presentation of the Council tax that the pie chart is like.

Because we do promote that, but we're not doing it well enough, I think is the key.

And we're not getting the message out there about spend and resources and projects that we are doing across the district.

So I think it's a great point because it's something that I'm very happy to take back to relevant portfolio holders as well.

I feel that's something probably that we can talk to the leadership about

in terms of their direction

and how they want to do more of these key issues.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:19:21

Councillor Chapman.

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 2:19:27

Thank you. Thanks for that. Lots of information.

I'd like to echo what Councillor Cooper Kelly said, very interesting.

But at the risk of repeating what other people have said,

here's the thing, you've got people in the marsh that think that other people in the

district are getting a better deal. You've got people in North Downs thinking that it's

all focused on Folkestone, but in Folkestone you've got people in Harbour Ward going well

over the other side of Folkestone, they're getting all of the money. And it's really

difficult to disabuse them of that or to argue about how the money is being spent if we don't

have more information. My part of the the district looks filthy. People go to the

west side of Folkestone town centre and for many complex reasons it appears to

be much tidier. I'm thinking of two streets in my area, like significant

streets, not like little tiny ones, where there were just no trees. None, not one

And then you go to the other side of the town and it feels leafy and green.

So all across the district you've got people going, well they're getting more.

And I'm in a ward where it is in the top 10 % that are most deprived in the country.

I think the third most deprived ward in Kent, the information I've got.

And I want to be able to show people that they are getting a fair share of the money.

And I don't think, you know, we need to be able to have that information somehow

and then we can have a think about whether or not we divide it up equally

or whether actually because those areas are more deprived, they need more.

Yeah, so I'm pretty sure it's really complicated and it's not an easy answer

but I think you've put loads of work in

but we don't have any of the answers that we really need.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:21:30

Mr Ewan Green - 2:21:33

Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh there. I understand the point completely. I understand exactly where you're coming from.

But I think that, with respect, I think there's a job for elected members in this, because this is about budget setting, it's about council priorities,

and it's about members bringing that back into this chamber and pursuing that agenda.

I'm not saying I'm defensive, but I do feel that as part of moving forward,

perhaps there's a point here around the budget setting process

that's coming forward and prioritisation,

where members have the ability to influence decision -making.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:22:15

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 2:22:19

But to come back, you kind of need to know what the ground zero is,

I think, to a certain extent as well.

If it turns out that actually an area's getting more than its fair share

in the first place, then that's something to think about.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:22:33

I'll take your point too, but I think it works both ways.

Thank you. Councillor Hills.

Councillor Tony Hills - 2:22:41

I said Councillor Hills.

I was miles away there. I still am absorbing the information.

No, it's a long historic joke

that Shetway used to stop funding at the bottom of Sandgate Hill.

and that's what used to be said in my neck of the woods for years

but I can tell you it's not true

I think you need to do a great job, our officers do a great job

and they're very even -handed

this bits are two -thirds, one -third on geography

but land mass is about the same almost

and that's life, you can't alter that

it should go where the need is most

that's actually the driving factor by and large

but it's all great stuff, it's all great stuff

But I know the officers are going to do a good job,

and I know they want to do a good job.

I haven't got a problem with that.

But I have got a problem when there's stuff missing from here.

Like, we spend half a million pounds a year

to the Robin Marsh Area Internal Furniture Board.

There's about half a million.

But that helps protect us a lot.

But everybody moans about paying it.

If you didn't have it, you'll find out what the problem would be.

And the biggest risk of flooding to the Marsh is the canal.

And the biggest air risk in my opinion is high.

And you know, people don't understand this,

you know we're all quite safe, we've got big sea defences,

that won't save anybody, because it's down there, is the problem.

Now, all I'd like to say is, where's the threats and challenges on this?

Because this shows us a bit of history and what we're doing, which is great,

but where's the things we're going to have to look at in the next year or so?

I mean, you mentioned it out with form, that's a challenge.

It's a challenge for us all.

It's a challenge to communicate it to our residents, our parishes.

I'm a great believer in parish councils, I go to all my parish councils.

Difficult on the same night, but I go the best I can, I cheer myself out.

But it's important to talk to people and get that feedback,

because this is so critical.

But the threats we've got, and anyone can mention this,

solar farms, industrialisation of Bombay Marsh.

Now, Robyn Marsh is the Fifth Continent.

It is a unique landscape.

No, it's not natural, it's not listed as such, but it is unique.

And we are under incredible threat.

And this Council can't stop it.

It's not consistent, maybe this Council Chamber

can be made by a certain person, his name's Ed Millebant,

up in government under critical infrastructure.

But we can have a view, and we will,

and we can help our residents understand what's going on.

People are very frightened out there,

and you'll be finding out at the next council meeting, I believe,

but they're very frightened out there.

I think we've got to look at the threats and challenges

as well as the good stuff we've been doing historically.

But I'm not trying to be negative, because I think you're doing a great job.

Thank you.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:25:48

Cllr Anita Jones - 2:25:51

So I think a lot of it, and I think I've said this about the last few overview and scrutiny

meetings, is that we need to communicate better, particularly those people who aren't digitally

connected.

And I've been talking with the leader a lot about the magazine that we used to have, and

I believe there might be movement towards having that again.

I think that is so valuable, and then we can communicate to everybody.

I think I found during the election period,

the amount of people, older people I spoke to,

who don't even know who their councillor is.

They don't know what the council is doing,

because, or they're getting misinformation

from various publications about what these other people

think the council are doing.

So I think, it's not a huge investment,

but it will actually come back

and really be an amazing thing for our council.

A lot of good news storeys, but a lot of information as well.

How do you actually contact the council?

Yeah, it's very simple.

So, I think there's a number of meetings I've said that at recently.

So, I'm hoping that's kind of come through.

Not everybody's on social media.

A lot of people are actually coming off of social media these days

because they're fed up of it.

But one thing I would say, we were talking about the ward grants.

A really good project perhaps for our social media team would be to see which ward grants

have been approved and they could go and take photos of the projects.

That would be, or maybe members could share photos of the projects and they could champion,

look what happened this month because this member put money into this project.

And that would be really amazing for our social media I think.

And again we can feed that into, if we get this magazine up and running again, that would

really positive. I think there's been a lot of great things which you've

highlighted. I am pleased to see there is a good spread. The Rural England

Prosperity Fund that's been really positive for rural areas and I'm really

glad that that's coming through again this year. The Green Grants, I'm so

excited to see what's happening with the Green Grants. I've seen which ones are

coming up for our ward and I'm sure there's been really good projects across

the whole district and again that's something which we worked with our youth forums particularly

and I think some youth based schools and youth groups have come forward with things and I

think again good news storeys will need we must publicise where those projects are happening

get pictures and again not just on social media and our website we need to get it out

in a different format to people.

You mentioned the Council on Tour.

I had a brief conversation with our lead the other day

about how we ought to think about that again,

because I think, again, that's really important for us

to show that we're not just in Folkestone.

We do have the North Downs and we do have,

we've been to the Marsh,

so we might not go to the Marsh again.

So I think certainly I'd like to take that conversation forward

because I think it's kind of a really visible way

of just saying to the population,

you are not just Folkstone Heights, you're more than that.

So it's limiting our name Folkstone Heights sadly,

isn't it, that it cuts out the North Downs and Romney Marsh,

but we need to make them feel

that they are actually part of our district.

Sorry, I'm a bit of a around that.

But apart from that, I think,

loads of really positive stuff.

So I don't want this to be a negative feedback.

and it is really heartwarming to think that we are doing so many good things in the district

actually and it is a fairly good spread but again it's just about understanding where

in specific things have taken place and even knowing that they're taking place.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:29:38

Thank you very much.

Councillor Thomas.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

Cllr Paul Thomas - 2:29:44

Well, I think this does go some way to counter some of the things, as Councillor

Hills has already said, that you read on the real marsh watch about the

notice stuff at the read -out. And again, I think there's some excellent stuff

that's being done and it is about communication as much as anything else.

Just picking up on a point that Councillor Jones has made in my monthly report to

the Longytown Council, I always identify where my ward grants have been spent and

under benefit that it's actually had.

People often comment on that at meetings.

So again, I think it is about communication.

On the positive side, in here you talk about Ron Rie Warren

and the Ron Muehl Ashford's Centre,

there's great news that on Saturday

we've got the reopening of that centre.

That's really good to see the way that's been turned around.

Bearing in mind, it was very short notice

that we were given in terms of termination of that.

And so again, the working party that we've been part of,

both Tony Hills and I, and the drive from the district

is really good to have turned that round.

So I think that's a real positive.

And again, I think people will view that and say,

we are looking at what we can do to maintain facilities such as that.

And I just hope that the rest of the Marsh and the rest of the district

support it the way that they said they have done.

if you read a lot of things on social media.

The Jund Parish Council meeting is very poorly represented.

Often, when...

Certainly I've been at those meetings in the past,

when there's been more officers and district councillors there

than there has been parish councils.

So again, I think there needs to be a real push

to make sure that the parish councils understand

what they can get from that meeting and that they can influence that agenda

through their ward members to make sure that they can have the topics on there

and you will have the most appropriate officer or director who's involved in

delivering that back to the parish councils. It's a really good forum that's

really underutilised so again I think that would help with the communication

from the council down to the individual indoor parishes.

Just on the general fund budget, the community grants,

I think there's an opportunity there as well

to improve the communication of that

so people know how they can tap into it.

Greater member feedback on CIL allocation.

I think that's a great idea.

Again, it's something which I think at some future stage

we need to understand how does that work

and what do you need from us to make that successful?

I think that's a great idea.

A new district swimming pool.

You mentioned it, so I'm going to mention it as well.

A new district swimming pool.

I'd say we've got this land that we can buy for a pound

on Martello Lakes.

We've allocated money in our capital schemes going forward for this.

Again, I think everybody would be really interested to know

what are our plans for developing that going forward.

Whilst we're talking about capital,

and again this is on your partnerships,

the integrated care boards and health improvements,

we sort of touched on it earlier on,

we've been kicking around this health centre from Romney Marsh

for what seems like an awful long time.

And again, I think just in terms of engagement and people understanding,

what we can do to support that,

it is in our capital plan, it's got nine million allocated against that.

The information in there is slightly out of date.

But again, I think if people were briefed regularly on that,

and it's something I really struggle with,

because as I said earlier on, both Tony and I sit on

the Romney Marsh Promicare Network Integrated Neighbourhood team,

and we've been looking at putting forward the needs,

what are the needs of Romney Marsh.

Until you know that, then you won't actually know

what you need to deliver to meet those needs,

and whether some of that is affordable or not.

But again, we never seem to have an opportunity or a forum

for getting that on the table in a form

that we can communicate with our residents.

I think that's critical, actually.

But overall, thank you very much for what you've presented today.

I'll certainly be sending this off to our town clerk

for dissemination to our councillors,

so that they've got something that they can then use

as a means of communicating with residents

when they're challenged on what have the Romans ever done for us.

Thank you very much.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:34:31

Thank you. Councillor Holgate.

Cllr Rich Holgate - 2:34:34

Thank you. Just to final two points.

I think this debate has demonstrated the subjectivity of equitability.

I think, again, in terms of the slides, presentation to cabinet,

which is the next step, is providing a steer on ground zero, actually.

Through what lens will this council view equitability?

Is it through threats to the land and through trees?

Is it through money spent, capital spent?

And I think yes, of course we can elect the members,

countries as we should.

But I think understanding the science, the relevant models

or just helping us approach the next budgeting and cycles

and the future, what do we mean by equitability?

That's an enormous question and it should be an enormous debate.

It'll be a good one to have. Maybe we can't answer it,

but I think there needs to be something,

otherwise the cabinet meeting in which you have this

will probably end up in a similar debate about what is equitability.

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:35:39

Mr Ewan Green - 2:35:40

Go ahead.

I think, well, just on your specific last point there,

I don't think we're planning on taking this presentation to cabinet.

I think what we're planning to do is take the feedback from you as a committee

into consideration of how we might improve budget setting work with you,

how we look at it, and I'd encourage you all about the corporate action plan as well,

the next iteration of that, there are some comments here as well,

but I'm engaging you on that.

So I think that's certainly probably the direction of travel,

but we'll consider it all as a corporate leadership team.

And just to say, I think, thank you very much.

I appreciate this is quite a difficult one to talk around,

but some of the feedback here is absolutely excellent

and there's some great points that we can take away

and think how we can action them

just in our daily business anyway,

particularly around communication,

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 2:36:31

which I think seems to be a strong theme, so thank you.

Excellent, thank you.

So, if there are no other points,

that was our last agenda item, there are no votes on it,

so that's the end of our meeting.

Webcast Finished - 2:36:42

Thank you very much for your time.

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Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 29 July 2025, 6:00pm - Folkestone & Hythe webcasting

Overview and Scrutiny CommitteeTuesday, 29th July 2025 at 6:00pm

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Twitter

Forums

Speakers

Feedback

Votes

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:00:03

Mr Jake Hamilton - 0:00:49

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:00:55

1 Apologies for Absence

2 Declarations of Interest

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:01:08

3 Minutes

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:01:52

4 Minutes of the Finance and Performance Sub-Committee

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:02:03

5 Cabinet Member updates

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:06:54

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:07:01

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:08:52

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:09:30

Councillor Tony Hills - 0:09:34

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:10:33

Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:10:37

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:12:22

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:17:06

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 0:17:11

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:19:01

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:20:43

Cllr Anita Jones - 0:20:48

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:21:23

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:22:13

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:22:33

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:23:07

Cllr Mike Blakemore - 0:23:28

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:23:46

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:24:04

6 Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Service Charge 'De-Pooling' For Council Housing Tenants - Update

Gill Butler - 0:24:22

Cllr Rebecca Shoob - 0:24:32

Gill Butler - 0:27:33

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 0:38:21

Gill Butler - 0:41:06

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:43:08

Cllr Elaine Martin - 0:44:11

Gill Butler - 0:44:55

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 0:45:31

Gill Butler - 0:46:33

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:47:17

Gill Butler - 0:48:07

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:48:53

Gill Butler - 0:49:25

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:50:28

Gill Butler - 0:51:11

Cllr Paul Thomas - 0:51:45

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:52:10

Councillor Tony Hills - 0:52:15

Gill Butler - 0:54:41

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 0:55:59

Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:56:03

Gill Butler - 0:58:22

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 0:58:55

Gill Butler - 0:59:35

Cllr Rich Holgate - 1:01:51

Gill Butler - 1:02:00

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 1:03:31

Gill Butler - 1:04:44

Mrs Executive Test-Exec - 1:05:39

Gill Butler - 1:05:59

Cllr Bridget Chapman - 1:06:23

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:06:33

Cllr Anita Jones - 1:06:39

Gill Butler - 1:07:04

Cllr Abena Akuffo-Kelly - 1:08:09

Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 29th July 2025 at 6:00pm