The questions which have been received from Councillors to be put at this Council meeting are set out in the attached report.  A maximum period of 30 minutes is allocated to this agenda item.

 

 

The following questions and in each case supplementary questions were put (except where indicated) and were responded to by the Mayor, relevant Executive Member, or Committee Chair.

 

9.1 Question from Councillor John Pierce

 

How has the Overview and Scrutiny Committee scrutinised the Council's proposed 2019-20 Budget and the MTFS 2019-22?

 

Response of Councillor Abdal Ullah, Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee:

 

The Committee with the help and support of a cross party, and more importantly residents and school governors have had an extensive meeting. I am grateful for the support of the Cabinet Members, particularly the Lead Member for Finance, Councillor Ronald for her time. We have spent one meeting looking at the overall budget. We are having a second meeting on the 28^th January to look at substantial changes if there are under the budget process. Can I also thank Neville Murton, the Acting Corporate Director of Resources and Zena Cooke the former Corporate Director of Resources. The Committee has scrutinised the following key areas: environment, community language, children’s services and adults social care. We hope to have a second meeting on the 28^th and to do more discussion about that.

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Pierce:

 

What is the Committee doing to scrutinise the Police’s decision to merge with Hackney. We all know that there has been a reduction in police numbers. What is the Committee doing to hold the Borough Commander to account for this?

 

Councillor Ullah’s response to the supplementary question:

 

The Communications department of the Council should be sending out a tweet as we speak, informing residents and Councillors of the next Community safety meeting, where the Lead Member, Councillor Asma Begum will be present with the Borough Commander who is now the Joint Borough Commander of  Hackney and Tower Hamlets. I am assured by her that she spends more time in Tower Hamlets. Next Monday evening is the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, and as part of the trilogy, which has been looking at the Council’s work around  empowering, education and community safety, we had an event at George Green looking at empowerment and education and more particularly looking at  white working class boys on the Isle of Dogs and their disadvantage and how we can get them to come out and reep the benefit of all that is great in our door step in Canary Wharf. We need to find work opportunities for young boys at the Council, so next Monday you are welcomed to the O&S Committee at the Town Hall.

 

9.2 Question from Councillor Peter Golds:

 

Why did the Mayor say in 2017 the “Illegally demolished historic cottages (on Eastferry road) must be rebuilt brick by brick” when in 2005 the “Council were happy at that time to see them demolished” according to the Planning Inspectorate?

 

Response of Mayor John Biggs:

 

The question refers to something I said in 2017. I stand by these words that the Illegally demolished buildings should be rebuilt brick by brick. The villains in this piece appealed to the Planning Inspectorate and we think that the Planning Inspectorate in this case has made an incredible perverse decision, and has not given proper weight to planning policy and is relying on anecdotal information and is not acting properly. We are considering our options as to how we can readdress this, because we feel that it is absolutely the wrong decision and gives a very poor signal to other developers who think that they can cynically demolish historic buildings and get away with it.

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Golds:

 

I think it is reassuring both to residents, those who are concerned on the Isle of Dogs and the Council that the Mayor stands by everything that  was said. He makes the point that the line in the Planning Inspectorate report on that is at best anecdotal. I hope we can proceed with this. I do think we need to join up issues here. This afternoon, I met two groups of residents on the Isle of Dogs. One of whom is living in an house that is actually falling down, and has a mother in a wheelchair. The next door neighbours are concerned that the semi detached house is falling down. They are having an ongoing battle with our planning department and we can’t get that resolved. It’s a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I would not expect the Mayor to go into detail about this as he has no idea of what I am talking about, as I have just raised that.

 

Therefore, I come to this issue of how the evidence described as anecdotal can be taken into account by the Planning Inspectorate and they can use it so lethally?

 

Mayor Biggs response to the supplementary question:

 

I agree with him. The advice I have is that the decision was perverse . It is certainly not anything that we expected. It is a green light if it is not challenged for developers to act cynically.  One of thing we have done in the last three years is to invest in increasing our enforcement capacity, as that was whittled down to almost nothing under the previous Administration. 

 

9.3 Question from Councillor Dipa Das

 

Could the Lead Member please provide an update on the Brexit Commission?

 

Response of Councillor Amina Ali, Cabinet Member for Culture, Arts and Brexit:

 

In terms of Brexit, while this current Prime Minister and her Government may be in a shambles, this Labour Administration is not. The Commission has finished gathering evidence, through our oral hearings and written submissions. We have run several events across the Borough including, a Business and Brexit event.  We are due to hold a young people and Brexit engagement event  this  evening. As the Mayor said, the Commission will be launching its findings on 14^th February at the City Hall. However, we have taken a number of steps to reassure our residents and our staff including, I am proud to say, continuing to hold residents road shows. We have published information on line for staff and residents and have gone to some effort to publicise a positive message to the 41, 000 EU residents in the Borough. You may have seen these messages across the Borough on bin lorries and on street advertising boards. Finally, I would like to finish on saying that this Labour Administration will continue fighting to prepare for Brexit -  whichever type of Brexit we may get.  We are on the side of all residents. #Tower Hamlets is a hospitable environment. 

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Das:

 

Regarding the staff in Tower Hamlet Council who may require the settled visa, if there is a fee involved, will the Council pay the fee?

 

Councillor Ali’s response to the supplementary question:

 

That fee is now being wavered and it is no longer a Government policy. I think they got the message from Tower Hamlets, so they have scrapped it.

 

9.4 Question from Councillor Andrew Wood:

 

Why did the Council on the 5th November 2018 ask the Grants Scrutiny Sub-Committee to agree to spend £650,000 on a new health app when on the 27th September 2018 the national NHS started beta testing of their own health app with very similar or additional features? (the NHS app was available on Google Play and Apple app stores from the end of 2018)

 

Response of Mayor John Biggs:

 

We have been in conversation with the NHS, and we are not convinced that this is a replication, but we are not going to proceed with funding until we clarify with the NHS its progress. I think anyone who knows about the NHS, will know that its record on developing software is pretty notoriously bad.  It may well make sense for us to get a move on with this since we have found residents taking up some of the superficially attractive offers for online GP services which  actually let them down in the long run. We want to look after local people but we will not act and spend money without proper advice and understanding of the NHS proposals and the timeline they are working to.

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Wood:

 

I think the most useful thing we in Tower Hamlets could do is to get our own local surgeries to sign on to this service, because currently  you can access the app but until the GPs surgeries are connected to it, it is of limited use. So will the Council be pushing to connect local surgeries to this NHS app as soon as possible in order to see how it works?

 

Mayor Biggs response to the supplementary question:

 

I think I just need to refer you to my previous answer. We are going to have a lively conversation with NHS Tower Hamlets who we have a very strong partnership. Our primary interest is the welfare of our residents and that they get the best possible advice and access to the health services in our Borough. 

 

9.5 Question from Councillor Victoria Obaze:

 

Can the Mayor or cabinet member please tell me what preparations the Council has made for rough sleepers during cold weather?

 

Response of Councillor Sirajul Islam, Statutory Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Housing:

 

Nobody should be sleeping rough in Tower Hamlets, this is an issue which we and the rest of the capital need to work together to tackle.  A severe weather emergency protocol (SWEP) is activated by the GLA, when in London Boroughs  night time  temperatures are forecasts to reach zero degrees or below on a single night . When it is activated, the hostel sector provides 36 additional bed spaces and our commissioned outreach team work additional hours to bring in doors those who they know who are on the street and respond to new referrals. No one is asked to leave the SWEP accommodation without a support plan in place to move them off the streets. We also offer mental health support directly to rough sleepers. These measures are in addition to the support we provide all year round, through our outreach team run by St Mungo’s, access to 450 supported accommodation bed spaces, a further 8 dedicated emergency bed spaces, and specialist drug and alcohol outreach. Cabinet recently approved our Homeliness and Rough sleeping strategy, which sets out our commitment and vision to prevent homelessness and end rough sleeping in Tower Hamlets. 

 

No supplementary question was asked.

 

9.7 Question from Councillor Bex White:

 

Could the Mayor outline how the council is taking forward the concerns raised regarding dangerous driving and air quality?

 

Response of Councillor David Edgar, Cabinet Member for Environment:

 

The question is about the steps that the Council is taking to address concerns about dangerous driving and air quality. Clearly vehicle exhaust is one of the leading causes of air pollution in the Borough, I think we and other people across the country know that air pollution is something that is increasingly seen as something that is damaging to the health of all ages in a whole range of ways. One of the things that the Council did in response to that was to adopt powers to issue a £20 fixed penalty notice to drivers who refuse to turn off their vehicles when asked.  We make visits to hotspots where that is seen as a problem. So far people have responded to requests. The issue of fast driving is one where people drive fast and they break hard which produces much more pollution than driving at a steady rate. So I am pleased that in the past the Police have been very responsive to discharging their obligations to try and control speed limits to keep it within the 20 mile limit that we have. I hope that the Police continue to do this, and it really helps achieve this objective.

 

No supplementary question was asked.

 

9.8 Question from Councillor Marc Francis:

 

Will the Lead Member update me on the progress of the refurbishment of the Victoria Park One O’clock Club, including a date when it will be re-opened for stay and play sessions for young children?

 

Response of Councillor Danny Hassell, Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Young People:

 

As you outlined we did make funding available this year, capital funding, and funding to commission a voluntary sector provider to run sessions at the building.  Unfortunately, we have not been able to finish the works at this time.  A full refurbishment will need to take place and that will need to meet the relevant requirements. Currently, we think the works to the buildings are likely to exceed the current costs that we have allocated in the capital budget, so we are currently undertaking a feasible study with the Corporate Property and Major Programmes and the Integrated Early Year service.  I can assure you that using that information, we will be able to make an informed decision. I will be able to give you more information on what the future of services will be and when we might be able to get services running their again. I can assure you that we are committed to delivering good quality early years. A sign of that commitment is during the summer period, when the club was closed, we did make sure that there were sessions running from the children centre at Overland in the park and they were running until the end of October. They will be running occasionally over the winter months as well .

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Francis:

 

Can I thank the Lead Member for that response and his work last summer to make sure the temporary activities took place in the park and also his most recent work along with the Mayor to push things along in terms of the refurbishment of the facility. In response to a follow up enquiry that I received asking about who children’s services approached, they said that they had not actually approached any voluntary sector providers as the building does not meet legal requirements. I think the Lead Member will know well enough that that sort of response, being told on one occasion that they have been unsuccessful and then subsequently that they have not actually made an approach, will ring a bell, because that is what happened with the nurseries as well. So I am really grateful for the assurance and the work that he is doing  to make sure that that service is reopened. Can he also give us an assurance that in the interim, if it is not open in the summer, a temporary programme will be re-established from early summer this year?

 

Councillor Hassell’s response to the supplementary question:

 

Just to explain the reasons why some of works have proven slightly more complicated. It is likely to include looking at such measures as ensuring there are separate toilets for children, adults and staff, disability access, repairs to the roof and potentially electrical rewiring. So all that needs to be costed up, so we can make a decision and think about what needs to be done. That’s also complicated by the rules around building footprints within the park. So once we have full information, we will be able to make an informed decision and will provide you with further information. In the meantime, I am happy to work with our teams in the children’s centres to ensure we have a stay and play offer running in the parks. I think this is really important particularly in a Borough such as ours where so many children are not able to access much open space.

 

9.9 Question from Councillor Sufia Alam:

 

Can the Lead Member please update us on work around the recruitment and retention of social workers?

 

Response of Councillor Danny Hassell, Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Young People:

 

I am pleased to report to the Council that we are having real success with the recruitment of permanent social workers. We are on track to meet or exceed our three recruitment targets. They are for the recruitment of experienced social workers, recruitment of newly qualified social workers and for the conversion of agency workers to permanent. As a sign of success we have managed to reduce our turn over figures for staff from 23.3% in February 2018 to 15. 1 % at the end of November. I am pleased to report that we have now gone from the highest in London back in 2017 for our turnover to now below the London wide average. We will continue to make sure that we are an employer of choice for social workers through the development of our restorative practice model and  investment we are proposing in our budget for the further development of our Social Work Academy.

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Alam:

 

Can you please advise if there any institutions in particular that have shown an interest in associated themselves with the social work academy?

 

Councillor Hassell’s response to the supplementary question:

 

We are currently working with London Metropolitan University and Royal Holloway  to develop that offer. We want that to be an accredited offer as we know that its accredited outcomes that will support our social workers to stay here to develop their practice and for that practice to be able to benefit our children and our families.

 

9.10 Question from Councillor Kyrsten Perry:

 

I'd like to ask Deputy Mayor Councillor Rachel Blake for an update on the Breathe Clean awareness campaign, given Tower Hamlets air pollution is the 5th worst of any London borough.

 

Response of Councillor Rachel Blake, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Air Quality:

 

I think the highlight of the last quarter of the Breathe Clean promotion campaign was securing a visit from Father Christmas. He had to leave Rudolf at home due to the terrible air quality in some of our worst areas. He carried out a visit to promote our various schemes to get people undertaking active travel, get businesses to move over to electric vehicles or cargo bikes.  London Live did a feature on our campaign. The event attracted 25,000 impressions on Twitter as well as 563 engagements. It was the 37^th most influential tweet in the country and listed as the Great Government Tweet. The video itself was viewed 1357 times. In all seriousness, we have been very active in promoting our School Streets and the Mayor’s air quality funding as well in order to ensure behaviour change to get our air quality to legal limits in Tower Hamlets.

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Perry:

 

What more needs to be done to get out air quality to legal levels?

 

Councillor Blake’s response to the supplementary question:

 

I think this comes down to two fundamental issues. The first is behaviour change  in the Borough. The second is lobbying and campaigning to make sure that the biggest sources of pollution in the Borough which we do not have any direct control over, such as traffic driving into the city fringe, construction work and of course the Blackwall Tunnel next to us are tackled. In terms of behaviour change, we have launched some really exciting campaigns in schools. We are working with schools in the Lansbury ward, which is one of the worst effected wards for air quality, where they have a disco bike. You can get in touch to find out more about that. We have been doing a citizens science project on mapping for change. We have an air quality fund that has been delivering small projects to help deliver the behaviour change and encourage active travel. I would like to work with the whole Council to take our fight to TfL and the GLA and to the national  government to secure a national car scrapage scheme, so we can get some of our most polluting vehicles of the road and get air quality within legal limits.

 

9.11 Question from Councillor Asma Islam

 

Can the Lead Member please provide an update on the findings of the latest Ofsted monitoring visit of Children’s Social Care?

 

Response of Councillor Danny Hassell, Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Young People:

 

The opening line of the main findings of Oftsed was that the effective action taken by Leaders and Managers following the August Monitoring visit has led to considerable improvements in the quality of social work practice for children in care. I am sure as corporate parents, we are all incredible pleased with the progress that has been made and are grateful to the social workers, the managers and the partners who have made that possible. The inspection found that there has been a positive cultural change in the service. We have seen that there are better quality housing for our care leavers, that our health assessments are now conducted in a more timely fashion, and our permanence planning has improved. This is also supported by the work of our Social Work Academy, with more social workers choosing to stay here to develop their practice and for that to benefit the children in our care even more.  

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Alam:

 

What are the areas for further focus and development going forward?

 

Councillor Hassell’s response to the supplementary question:

 

As ever, we know that we are not going to be complacent. We are on an improvement journey and we will never be complete. We always need to make sure that there is more work to be done to improve those outcomes. Our particular areas of focus are developing our Though Care Service, so we are better supporting our children in care, as they become care leavers. That will be supported by additional funding being proposed in the budget. We also want to do more to reduce the number of care leavers who are not in employment, education or training. We are going to be working with partners both within and outside the Council to make sure that we deal with that. One of the really key areas of focus for all of our partners that’s our schools, children’s centres and health partners is going to be how we respond to neglect and how we do that in a timely fashion, to make sure we deal with needs when they emerge, before they escalate. Our early help offer will be coordinating much of that work.

 

9.12 Question from Councillor Val Whitehead:

 

I would like to thank the Lead Member for inviting me to the Mayor’s Early Years Summit in November and ask him to update us on the issues raised and the next steps to be taken.

 

Response of Mayor John Biggs:

 

The Early Years Summit was a key priority in the Manifesto, the one that Councillor Wood has apparently read. It is very important to us the work that we want to do for our early years. I would echo what Jeremy Corbyn said at the Labour Party conference last year, which is quite how important it is to empowering people to provide good early years support. But it is important for another reason as the science is clear, that adversity in a child’s early years dramatically effects their health and education and outcomes for life. If you don’t catch these things early and disrupt them, the problems can continue and massively set children back. Following the Summit we used the feedback to  help design a number of investments and they are in the budget pack, which we will be debating in the next week. That is really a down payment as to make a real intervention, we need to have a government and a funding regime, which allows us to identify resources to really raise the game for under fives so we can tackle the disadvantage of people who are currently not receiving those services.

 

Supplementary question from Councillor Whitehead:

 

Can I ask about the measures in the package for our children’s first 1001 days?

 

Mayor’s Biggs response to the supplementary question:

 

The package includes: a doubling of the Council’s holiday childcare scheme; £500,000 to top up the number of hours of free education offered to two year olds, which is within the 1000 days and a targeted programme to improve attendance of early years service sessions. We find that in cases that some of the people who probable need the service most might have the greatest challenges in accessing them for their children. The package also includes: a pilot programme of breakfast and after schoolclubs which is maybe a bit over 1000 days. Capital funding to create new inclusive settings, for example, induction loops for deaf children and investing in the infrastructure of early years in partnership with private and voluntary providers and also through the Council own facilities.

 

9.13 Question from Councillor Sabina Akhtar:

 

Can the cabinet member please update members about the £1.5m investment in the borough’s leisure centres?

 

Response of Councillor Amina Ali, Cabinet Member for Culture, Arts and Brexit:

 

Works have started on major improvements to the borough’s leisure centres with over £1.5 million investment across the borough. Why are we doing this?. It is because it is part of our manifesto promise. In that manifesto, we made a commitment to ensure that residents can have access to high quality leisure and exercise facilities wherever they live in the Borough. The Council’s Strategic Plan, which sets out our broad plans for the coming years, includes a commitment to improve our sport, cultural and recreational offer and we are working to do just that. Improvements are being made to a number of our facilities, and the full details and the timescales can be passed on to you Councillor at another date.

 

No supplemental question was asked.

 

Question 9.6 was not put due to the absence of the questioner. A Written response would be provided to the question. (Note the written response to the question is attached at Appendix A)