Agenda item

To consider and review the draft Borough Plan and priorities for 2023-27. Please note that the Chair and members of the Community & Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee have been invited to consider this item as a joint scrutiny review.

The Committee received a report detailing the draft Borough Plan 2023-27, which had been developed with departmental leads and set out the vision and strategic priorities developed with CMT and Cabinet earlier this year. The Committee were asked to note and comment on the report before endorsing ahead of its finalisation in early 2023.

Councillor Butt highlighted that the plan laid out the ambitions of the administration to achieve the best outcomes for Brent residents, including increasing skills and employment opportunities, providing a good standard of education in all Brent schools, delivering on the commitment to increase the affordable housing stock in Brent and ensure that Brent residents have every opportunity to thrive. Councillor Butt advised of the financial challenges going forward due to the lack of adequate fuding and mismanagement of the budget from central government, however highlighted that despite the budgetary pressures he felt the Labour administration in Brent had demonstrated they were able to positively manage the funds they had to work with residents and provide high level public services, it was felt that the draft borough plan continued to illustrate the Labour administration in Brent’s commitment to support residents.

The Committee had a number of questions on the draft borough plan, with the following key points discussed –

·         The Committee queried whether the objectives in the borough plan were achievable within budget when taking in to consideration the additional financial pressures the council was under. In response the Committee were advised that budgetary pressures were considered in the creation of the plan and the financial situation would continue to be monitored parallel to the objectives on the plan. , making changes as and when necessary. It was noted that the lack of certainty and delivery of single year budgets from central government increased pressures in planning local services.

·         It was confirmed that when the revised Borough Plan comes in to place there would be a degree of harmonisation with strategies and policies on the existing plan to ensure that the plan accurately captured the administrations’ vision for Brent and the steps needed to achieve this.

·         In response to a Committee concern that the extent of Brent’s climate ambition was not reflected in the borough plan, it was noted that feedback from residents demonstrated that climate concerns had not featured on residents top priorities. Despite this the Council were clear in acknowledging its social and moral responsibility to act upon climate concerns. As discussed previously some of the greatest impacts in reducing carbon emissions was through work with schools and addressing adaptations to Brent’s housing stock. Pending confirmation of funding and whether there would be a significant rent cap introduced, the council was not yet in a position to confirm if carbon offset in relation to investment in Brent’s housing stock would be achievable.

·         The Committee questioned officers regarding what they felt to be a lack of accountability on the plan coupled with ambiguous target setting, noting that specific targets would support clearer measurable outcomes. Officers reassured the Committee that the borough plan remained a live document and would not be finalised until the beginning of the next financial year. The Committee noted that specific target setting had been more challenging during the current stage of the plan’s construction due to the ambiguity around government funding. It was hoped that assurances would be made from central government confirming funding, once actual funding figures were known it would be possible to include more specific detail and areas of accountability in the plan.

·         In terms of the Borough Plan section “The Best Start in Life” whereby it was noted that Raising the attainment of Black African and Caribbean boys had been a feature of the last borough plan, the Committee were curious as to whether this had been achieved in the previous four years. In response it was confirmed that the funding agreed by the Schools Forum to support this initiative had been highly effective in narrowing the attainment gap from 12 to 8 points. Schools agreed that strong effective leadership, an allocated member of staff “champion” to lead on the initiative, tackling racism and stereotyping were all key to being able to minimise the attainment gap.

·      The Committee heard that when the current data is shared from schools if it were

    found that the levels of improvement had not been maintained there would be a

    need to approach the Schools Forum to explore further funding streams to ensure

    the gap continued to reduce.

·                                       The Committee acknowledged there were still gains to be made in

managing transitional safeguarding issues and a strong action plan was needed to continue to effectively manage this.

·        In response to a Committee question requiring clarity on the council’s position of delivering on 1000 new council homes and how many of these would be in addition to the current housing stock and how many were replacement homes, it was confirmed that in the last 4 year period 768 new homes had been built, with a target of an additional 1000 new homes in the next 4 year period.

·        The Committee noted that Brent were the only London borough to exclusively build social housing properties, with all other council’s building projects including shared ownership and market rent. It was acknowledged that if further support was not received from central government, Brent may have to also start building mixed tenure homes under these conditions in order for it to be viable to continue to also build homes for social rent.

The Chair thanked those present for their contributions including Councillor Sheth for attending in order to participate in the joint scrutiny items. The meeting was then moved on to consider suggestions for improvement and information requests which were agreed as follows:

The Committee noted the following suggestions for improvement:

i.              Ensure the outcomes/success criteria under each strategic priority is more specific, measurable, and accountable

ii.            Involve the worker community (i.e. trade unions) in the consultation/engagement process.

iii.           Make our climate action commitments more prominent throughout strategic priorities

iv.           Include ‘togetherness’ and ‘community cohesion’ throughout strategic priorities

v.            Ensure there is continuous engagement with the Brent Integrated Care Partnership on the Borough Plan.

The Committee noted the following information requests:

i.              What have we done (or what are we planning to do) to involve communities who haven’t been involved historically in the consultation process for previous borough plans?

ii.            What targeted engagement is planned with marginalised/hard to reach groups in the borough?

Please provide a breakdown on the amount of people consulted/engaged with so far in order for the committee to establish how representative the data set is of the borough’s demographic.