AGENDA

Meeting Budget and Performance Committee Date Wednesday 14 October 2020 Time 10.00 am Place Virtual Meeting Copies of the reports and any attachments may be found at www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/budget-performance

Most meetings of the and its Committees are webcast live at https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/london-assembly/youtube and/or www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/webcasts where you can also view past meetings.

Members of the Committee AM (Chairman) AM AM (Deputy Chair) Dr Alison Moore AM Siân Berry AM MBE AM Unmesh Desai AM Dr AM

A meeting of the Committee has been called by the Chairman of the Committee to deal with the business listed below. Ed Williams, Executive Director of Secretariat Tuesday 6 October 2020

[Note: This meeting has been called in accordance with the Local Authorities and Police and Crime Panels (Coronavirus) (Flexibility of Local Authority and Police and Crime Panel Meetings) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020. These regulations permit formal London Assembly meetings to be held on a virtual basis, with Assembly Members participating remotely, subject to certain conditions. The regulations apply notwithstanding any other legislation, current or pre-existing Standing Orders or any other rules of the Authority governing Assembly meetings, and remain valid until 7 May 2021. The meeting will be broadcast live via the web-link set out above. The regulations may be viewed here.]

Further Information If you have questions, would like further information about the meeting or require special facilities please contact: Laura Pelling Principal Committee Manager; Telephone: 020 7983 5526; Email: [email protected]

For media enquiries please contact Aoife Nolan; Communications Officer; Telephone: 020 7983 4067; Email: [email protected]. If you have any questions about individual items please contact the author whose details are at the end of the report.

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If you, or someone you know, needs a copy of the agenda, minutes or reports in large print or Braille, audio, or in another language, then please call us on 020 7983 4100 or email [email protected].

Certificate Number: FS 80233

Agenda Budget and Performance Committee Wednesday 14 October 2020

1 Apologies for Absence and Chairman's Announcements

To receive any apologies for absence and any announcements from the Chairman.

2 Declarations of Interests (Pages 1 - 4)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Laura Pelling; [email protected]; 020 7983 5526

The Committee is recommended to:

(a) Note the list of offices held by Assembly Members, as set out in the table at Agenda Item 2, as disclosable pecuniary interests;

(b) Note the declaration by any Member(s) of any disclosable pecuniary interests in specific items listed on the agenda and the necessary action taken by the Member(s) regarding withdrawal following such declaration(s); and

(c) Note the declaration by any Member(s) of any other interests deemed to be relevant (including any interests arising from gifts and hospitality received which are not at the time of the meeting reflected on the Authority’s register of gifts and hospitality, and noting also the advice from the GLA’s Monitoring Officer set out at Agenda Item 2) and to note any necessary action taken by the Member(s) following such declaration(s).

3 Minutes (Pages 5 - 58)

The Committee is recommended to confirm the minutes of the meeting of the Budget and Performance Committee meeting held on 22 September 2020 to be signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

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4 Summary List of Actions (Pages 59 - 62)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Laura Pelling; [email protected]; 020 7983 5526

The Committee is recommended to:

(a) Note the ongoing and closed actions arising from previous meetings of the Committee; and

(b) Note the ongoing action arising from a previous meeting of the Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee.

5 The 2020-21 Budget Review - LLDC and OPDC (Pages 63 - 64)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Gino Brand; [email protected]; 07511 213765

The Committee is recommended to:

(a) Note the report as background to putting questions to invited guests on the 2020-21 Budget Review and note the discussion; and

(b) Delegate authority to the Chairman, in consultation with party Group Lead Members and Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM, to agree any output from the meeting.

6 Budget and Performance Committee Work Programme (Pages 65 - 66)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Gino Brand; [email protected]; 07511 213765

The Committee is recommended to note its work programme for the remainder of 2020.

7 Date of Next Meeting

The next meeting of the Committee which will take place as a virtual meeting is scheduled for Thursday 22 October 2020 at 10.00am.

8 Any Other Business the Chairman Considers Urgent

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Agenda Item 2

Subject: Declarations of Interests

Report to: Budget and Performance Committee

Report of: Executive Director of Secretariat Date: 14 October 2020

This report will be considered in public

1. Summary

1.1 This report sets out details of offices held by Assembly Members for noting as disclosable pecuniary interests and requires additional relevant declarations relating to disclosable pecuniary interests, and gifts and hospitality to be made.

2. Recommendations

2.1 That the list of offices held by Assembly Members, as set out in the table below, be noted as disclosable pecuniary interests1;

2.2 That the declaration by any Member(s) of any disclosable pecuniary interests in specific items listed on the agenda and the necessary action taken by the Member(s) regarding withdrawal following such declaration(s) be noted; and

2.3 That the declaration by any Member(s) of any other interests deemed to be relevant (including any interests arising from gifts and hospitality received which are not at the time of the meeting reflected on the Authority’s register of gifts and hospitality, and noting also the advice from the GLA’s Monitoring Officer set out at below) and any necessary action taken by the Member(s) following such declaration(s) be noted.

3. Issues for Consideration

3.1 Relevant offices held by Assembly Members are listed in the table overleaf:

1 The Monitoring Officer advises that: Paragraph 10 of the Code of Conduct will only preclude a Member from participating in any matter to be considered or being considered at, for example, a meeting of the Assembly, where the Member has a direct Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in that particular matter. The effect of this is that the ‘matter to be considered, or being considered’ must be about the Member’s interest. So, by way of example, if an Assembly Member is also a councillor of London Borough X, that Assembly Member will be precluded from participating in an Assembly meeting where the Assembly is to consider a matter about the Member’s role / employment as a councillor of London Borough X; the Member will not be precluded from participating in a meeting where the Assembly is to consider a matter about an activity or decision of London Borough X.

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Member Interest AM OBE AM AM MP Member of Parliament, Orpington; Member, LB Bexley Shaun Bailey AM Siân Berry AM Member, LB Camden AM Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (Council of Europe) Léonie Cooper AM Member, LB Wandsworth Unmesh Desai AM Tony Devenish AM Member, City of Westminster AM Len Duvall AM AM MP Member of Parliament, Vauxhall AM Susan Hall AM Member, LB Harrow AM Joanne McCartney AM Deputy Mayor Dr Alison Moore AM Member, LB Barnet Steve O’Connell AM Member, LB Croydon Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM AM Murad Qureshi AM AM Member, LB Islington Dr Onkar Sahota AM AM Peter Whittle AM

[Note: LB - London Borough]

3.2 Paragraph 10 of the GLA’s Code of Conduct, which reflects the relevant provisions of the Localism Act 2011, provides that:

- where an Assembly Member has a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in any matter to be considered or being considered or at

(i) a meeting of the Assembly and any of its committees or sub-committees; or

(ii) any formal meeting held by the Mayor in connection with the exercise of the Authority’s functions

- they must disclose that interest to the meeting (or, if it is a sensitive interest, disclose the fact that they have a sensitive interest to the meeting); and

- must not (i) participate, or participate any further, in any discussion of the matter at the meeting; or (ii) participate in any vote, or further vote, taken on the matter at the meeting

UNLESS

- they have obtained a dispensation from the GLA’s Monitoring Officer (in accordance with section 2 of the Procedure for registration and declarations of interests, gifts and hospitality – Appendix 5 to the Code).

3.3 Failure to comply with the above requirements, without reasonable excuse, is a criminal offence; as is knowingly or recklessly providing information about your interests that is false or misleading.

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3.4 In addition, the Monitoring Officer has advised Assembly Members to continue to apply the test that was previously applied to help determine whether a pecuniary / prejudicial interest was arising - namely, that Members rely on a reasonable estimation of whether a member of the public, with knowledge of the relevant facts, could, with justification, regard the matter as so significant that it would be likely to prejudice the Member’s judgement of the public interest.

3.5 Members should then exercise their judgement as to whether or not, in view of their interests and the interests of others close to them, they should participate in any given discussions and/or decisions business of within and by the GLA. It remains the responsibility of individual Members to make further declarations about their actual or apparent interests at formal meetings noting also that a Member’s failure to disclose relevant interest(s) has become a potential criminal offence.

3.6 Members are also required, where considering a matter which relates to or is likely to affect a person from whom they have received a gift or hospitality with an estimated value of at least £50 within the previous three years or from the date of election to the London Assembly, whichever is the later, to disclose the existence and nature of that interest at any meeting of the Authority which they attend at which that business is considered.

3.7 The obligation to declare any gift or hospitality at a meeting is discharged, subject to the proviso set out below, by registering gifts and hospitality received on the Authority’s on-line database. The on- line database may be viewed here: https://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/gifts-and-hospitality.

3.8 If any gift or hospitality received by a Member is not set out on the on-line database at the time of the meeting, and under consideration is a matter which relates to or is likely to affect a person from whom a Member has received a gift or hospitality with an estimated value of at least £50, Members are asked to disclose these at the meeting, either at the declarations of interest agenda item or when the interest becomes apparent.

3.9 It is for Members to decide, in light of the particular circumstances, whether their receipt of a gift or hospitality, could, on a reasonable estimation of a member of the public with knowledge of the relevant facts, with justification, be regarded as so significant that it would be likely to prejudice the Member’s judgement of the public interest. Where receipt of a gift or hospitality could be so regarded, the Member must exercise their judgement as to whether or not, they should participate in any given discussions and/or decisions business of within and by the GLA.

4. Legal Implications

4.1 The legal implications are as set out in the body of this report.

5. Financial Implications

5.1 There are no financial implications arising directly from this report.

Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 List of Background Papers: None Contact Officer: Laura Pelling, Principal Committee Manager Telephone: 020 7983 5526 E-mail: [email protected]

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Page 4 Agenda Item 3

MINUTES

Meeting: Budget and Performance Committee Date: Tuesday 22 September 2020 Time: 10.00 am Place: Virtual Meeting

Copies of the minutes may be found at: http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/budget-performance

Present:

Susan Hall AM (Chairman) Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair) Siân Berry AM Unmesh Desai AM Tony Devenish AM Dr Alison Moore AM Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM Dr Onkar Sahota AM

Observer: Steve O'Connell AM

1 Apologies for Absence and Chairman's Announcements (Item 1)

1.1 The Chairman explained that in accordance with Government regulations the meeting was being held on a hybrid basis, with some Assembly Members present in City Hall and others attending remotely.

1.2 The Clerk read the roll-call of Assembly Members who were participating at the meeting. There were no apologies for absence.

1.3 In accordance with Standing Order 8.2, Assembly Member O’Connell attended the meeting as an Observer.

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2 Declarations of Interests (Item 2)

2.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.

2.2 Resolved:

That the list of offices held by Assembly Members, as set out in the table at Agenda Item 2, be noted as disclosable pecuniary interests.

3 Minutes (Item 3)

3.1 Resolved:

That the minutes of the meeting held on 7 July 2020 be signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

4 Summary List of Actions (Item 4)

4.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.

4.2 Resolved:

(a) That the completed and outstanding actions arising from previous meetings of the Committee be noted; (b) That the ongoing action arising from a previous meeting of the Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee be noted; and (c) That the additional correspondence sent, and received, by the Chairman be noted.

5 The 2020-21 Budget Review - Police and Fire (Item 5)

5.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat as background to putting questions on the 2020-21 Budget Review - Police and Fire.

5.2 The following invited guests attended for the first part of the meeting:  Sophie Linden, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime;  Jo Moore, interim Chief Finance Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC);  Robin Wilkinson OBE, Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service (MPS);  Ian Percival, Director of Finance, MPS; and  David Gallie, Executive Director of Resources, Greater London Authority (GLA).

Page 6 Greater London Authority Budget and Performance Committee Tuesday 22 September 2020

5.3 A transcript of the discussion is attached as Appendix 1.

5.4 During the course of the discussion, the Chief of Corporate Services, MPS, agreed to provide the following additional information:  Details of any transcription services used by the MPS;  A top-line list of income generation by the MPS for the current year and 2019/20; and  Details of current grant or commissioning funding from Transport for London (TfL) and from local government for policing services provided.

5.5 The Committee requested that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime provide examples of collaboration between the emergency services and the savings that have been delivered.

5.6 The Chairman adjourned the meeting at 11.50am. The meeting resumed at 12pm.

5.7 The following invited guests attended for the second part of the meeting:  Andy Roe, London Fire Commissioner;  Sue Budden, Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade (LFB); and  David Gallie, Executive Director of Resources, GLA.

5.8 A transcript of the discussion is attached as Appendix 2.

5.9 During the course of the discussion, the Committee requested the following additional information:  Details of any contractual arrangements in place for training fire safety inspection officers to ensure newly trained staff are retained within the Brigade;  The progress that has been made against the transformation plan in percentage terms along with any other relevant updates on delivering the plan;  A top-line list of income generated by the Brigade in this year and 2019/20;  An update on the fleet replacement project in terms of finances and timescales;  An update on efforts to contribute to the Mayor’s Homes for London programme; and  A breakdown of the £2 million Grenfell legal fee.

5.10 Resolved:

(a) That the report and discussion be noted and (b) That authority be delegated to the Chairman, in consultation with party Group Lead Members and Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM, to agree any output from the meeting.

Page 7 Greater London Authority Budget and Performance Committee Tuesday 22 September 2020

6 Quarter 1, 2020/21 GLA Group Monitoring Reports and Quarter 4 2019/20 TfL Monitoring Reports (Item 6)

6.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat. The Chairman noted that Appendix 1e should have been labelled Appendix 5c as it related to the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation.

6.2 Resolved:

(a) That the monitoring reports for Quarter 1 of 2020/21 be noted; and (b) That the monitoring reports for Transport for London for Quarter 4 of 2019/20 be noted.

7 Mayor's Decision List: 5 June 2020 to 3 September 2020 (Item 7)

7.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.

7.2 Resolved:

That the Mayor’s Decision Lists for 5 June 2020 to 3 September 2020 be noted.

8 Payments over £250 (Item 8)

8.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Resources.

8.2 Resolved:

That the report be noted.

9 Budget and Performance Committee Work Programme (Item 9)

9.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat

9.2 Resolved:

That the work programme for the remainder of 2020, as agreed under delegated authority by the Chair of the GLA Oversight Committee on 20 July 2020, be noted.

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10 Date of Next Meeting (Item 10)

10.1 The next meeting of the Committee which would take place as a virtual meeting was scheduled for Tuesday 29 September 2020 at 10.00am.

11 Any Other Business the Chairman Considers Urgent (Item 11)

11.1 There were no other items of business.

12 Close of Meeting

12.1 The meeting ended at 1.09pm.

Chairman Date

Contact Officer: Laura Pelling Principal Committee Manager; Telephone: 020 7983 5526; Email: [email protected]

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Page 10 Appendix 1

London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee - Tuesday 22 September 2020 Transcript of Item 5 - 2020-21 Budget Review – Police and Fire

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): That brings us to today’s main item of business, the 2020/21 Budget Review, starting with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). I would very much like to welcome our guests, Sophie Linden, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, and Jo Moore, Interim Chief Financial Officer with MOPAC. Both these ladies are actually in the Assembly Hall here. Then we have Robin Wilkinson, Chief of Corporate Services, MPS, online; Ian Percival, Finance Director of the MPS, also online; and David Gallie, Executive Director for Resources, Greater London Authority (GLA). He is also online.

Now we go straight into the questions, and this is to all of you. How has COVID-19 impacted the MPS’s finances and what are the main challenges arising as a result? Sophie, would you like to set the scene, or Jo?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I am very happy to start.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Thank you very much. There are a few ways in which COVID is challenging City Hall, MOPAC and the MPS budget. The first is a projected reduction in council tax and business rates income, which means the Mayor has had to, as you know, set out interim budget guidance in June [2020] and has had to put some scenarios together, three scenarios that we are having to plan against, all of which include reductions in income that affect the MPS and MOPAC. We are, at the moment, being asked to plan for the most likely scenario, which is £45 million of in-year savings needing to be found. That is a significant amount of money. It is very unusual to have to find in-year savings and that is a direct result of projections to loss of income. Now, the Mayor has published a Mayoral Decision recently in which he is going to use the reserves to halve the amount of savings that MOPAC and the MPS have to find. In the scenario, he is putting aside money so that he can reduce the savings by 50%.

The second way in which COVID has had an impact on the MPS and on MOPAC is in relation to operations and, operationally, what is happening in London, and the way in which, for MOPAC, our commissioned services are having to adapt. For the MPS, there is projected to be an increase in costs of around £50 million over the year because of COVID. That includes costs around overtime, costs around personal protective equipment (PPE), and the impact of loss of income. Now, that is quite a significant amount of money. Clearly, we will be asking the Government to be recompensing the MPS for that money but at the moment we only have an indication that the Government is prepared to reimburse the MPS for its direct costs for PPE, which is projected to be about £9.9 million, so we are going to see a shortfall.

The other way in which we have been impacted by COVID is in terms of commissioning of services. We have had to adapt very rapidly, as has everybody. This is not special pleading for MOPAC. Everyone in London and across the country, including the Assembly, has had to adapt the way in which we deliver our services. There has been an impact on that. Some of that impact is in relation to having to reprofile spend, but some of the impact is also in relation to an increase in demand. For example, in domestic abuse services, we have put money aside and we have invested in new services to meet some of the demand. Also, we have invested in supporting our organisations that deliver commissioned services in adapting. We have put aside £500,000 into

Page 11 the London Community Fund for our MOPAC services, nearly all of which has been spent on supporting our services to adapt during the COVID crisis.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes. The PPE issue is a big one, and we note that in the papers, for Fire as well. I think theirs is around £5 million for PPE. In terms of the impact of programmes, can you give any examples where it has stopped you doing a particular thing which might have saved you money, where it has stopped you doing something that would have cost money, leading to a saving? Obviously, we are living in a different world. Can you look at something that would have saved you money, or --

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I do not think it is a question of it stopping us doing things that might have saved us money. It has had an impact in terms of the way that services are being delivered. For example, as I said, we have supported our services to adapt. That means they bid into the London Community Fund, which is a GLA fund that we put money aside for, to enable them to adapt so that they can move from face-to-face to online. Many of our services did not have the capacity to do that and we have been supporting them in being able to do that. In terms of things that have not been able to happen because of COVID, some of the services have not just had to adapt but have had to seriously change, for example, some of the face-to-face services in relation to supporting young people. Some of those face-to- face services went online and some have not happened.

If we look at the savings, in terms of growth, because the money was allocated in this year’s budget, we have not yet been able, because of COVID, to stand up that growth fund. That is where we are in terms of the savings for in-year, reprofiling that so we can get some of the savings out for this year because there has not been, or will not be, the spend that we expected in this financial year.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I think we are going to explore that slightly more going forward. The last bit on this one section: what is being done to tackle the financial challenges so as to make the police budget more sustainable in the medium term?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I am sure Robin [Wilkinson] would want to come in here but there are two things, I think, in relation to what is being done to try to make the MPS budget more sustainable. Well, more than two. Many things, sorry.

First of all, the Mayor put aside business rate reserves to ensure that, going forward into the medium-term and in medium-term financial planning, the additional 1,000 officers will be affordable. That is a prudent decision by the Mayor to make sure that that happens. The second thing is that this is out of our control, in terms of the sustainability of the MPS budget, and we are lobbying very hard to ask the Government for better than annual budget-setting. We want multiyear budget-setting so that we know what the MPS budget is going to be like so that they can plan, and plan effectively, for recruitment.

At the moment, it is the end of September and we still do not know what the allocation is going to be for police officer growth for next year. We have had the allocation of 1,369 officers for this year and the MPS has met that, which is fantastic news, but we still do not know what is going to happen next year. There is great uncertainty in the budget for the next financial year, and the Spending Review is under way and we do not know what is going to be the outcome of that Spending Review. Some of that sustainability is in our hands in terms of reserves, prudent financial planning and making sure that, in terms of estate strategy, we have the savings coming through that we expect. However, quite a large part is out of our hands and is in the Government’s hands in relation to multiyear funding and providing allocations in a timely fashion, which they are not doing at the moment.

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Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. I think we will come back to the estate strategy because we were concerned about that in the last Budget rounds. I seem to recall Assembly Member Pidgeon particularly mentioning that. I think we will come back to that because that is still a concern to the Committee, I would suggest.

We will go on to the next section, which is revised budget saving proposals. I do not know if you want to take this, Sophie. What progress has MOPAC made in addressing the funding reductions proposed in the Mayor’s budget? Shall we go to Ian Percival, would that be better? Who would you suggest?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Good morning, Chair. Morning, Sophie. I am happy to start on this, if that is helpful, and Ian will come in as well. As Sophie has said, we are looking at the most likely savings from the scenarios we have been asked to model on for in- year reductions, just over £45 million.

There are three areas in which, collectively across the MPS and MOPAC, we are looking at that. Sophie has already mentioned one, which is the very, very welcome decision of the Mayor to provide a contribution from the GLA business rates to offset 50% of that in-year reduction. Also, one-off savings from the MOPAC budget. The third area will be a decision that we have made not to accelerate the recruitment of 600 officers from next year into this year. The Committee will remember that earlier in the year, we had hoped to be able to accelerate some of the extra officers that we assume the Government will allow us to recruit in the next financial year and get that recruitment underway this financial year. Given these in-year savings, that, regrettably, is not something that we are able to do and therefore we will achieve a saving against that planned budget in that regard.

More widely, of course, we are managing in-year a complex set of challenges linked to COVID with a number of extra costs. Sophie has outlined that we are needing to plan and manage against. We have taken some sensible decisions to delay some investments, delay some decisions, and we have recently taken the decision to pause police staff recruitment until there is greater certainty on our budgets moving forward.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. You are talking one-off savings and so on. Obviously, if we are going to have to make reductions, we need more than the one-off spends, we need to look at what you are changing to bring in budgetary caution, as it were. What exact areas have you targeted to reduce spend and what is the impact these reductions will have on services? I know you have not set out where you are looking at the savings but the Government may say no and the Mayor may not be able to assist in some ways, so which areas are you looking at where you might make some savings?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Thank you. A couple of general points first if I may. The level of uncertainty, of course, as you will know, is huge in the run- up to the Spending Review. We are very optimistic that the Government will continue with the officer growth programme, so that will be a welcome boost to the policing front line. As you know, we and the Commissioner [of Police of the Metropolis] are campaigning for the MPS and London to receive 6,000 of those extra officers and we are also campaigning hard to ensure that the cost of those officers comes with the costs for supporting all of the other things that are necessary to keep the MPS in shape.

Of course, there is also the wider Spending Review taking place, within which we, with City Hall colleagues and colleagues across national policing, are pushing very hard for a strong policing settlement. Given all that, it is very hard for us to know what the position will be like financially from next year with any level of certainty,

Page 13 whether that is a net positive position of continued targeted investment, a neutral position or a negative position. It is very hard to plan.

What we are doing within the MPS is establishing a priority-based budgeting process where we are, in a great level of detail, looking at all of our services in a considered way and identifying areas in which we can either deliver those services more efficiently and/or where we have choices around the level of service. Over a period, we will review all of the MPS services through that kind of process.

I know, Chair, you said we will come back to estates, but we are obviously continuing to look at our estate spend given the size of that and we can talk more about that, no doubt, through the year. Our medium-term financial plan already assumes that all leaders in the MPS will be identifying 1% annual efficiency targets. We are going through the process as we speak of identifying what that will look like for next financial year. Depending on the level of the settlement, the priority-based budgeting process over the course of the next 6, 12, 18, 24 months, will give us that basis for consistently looking at our services across the MPS.

My final point, though, would be that of course if we are in a position of having to make substantial reductions, those reductions can only come from budgets that are not linked to police officers because with the Government’s growth programme the police officer budget is effectively locked, and that is the largest part of our budget, as you will be aware. If we are having to make reductions from non-officer parts of the budget then inevitably there will be some tough service choices for us, whether that is internal service choices, the amount we invest in our people, training and development, as an example, or in the services that we provide to London.

The Committee will know this, but of course the largest part of the non-protected budgets go on areas such as our call handling, our 999 and 101 service, our forensics service, our intelligence service and our custody services, and they are, of course, for us, very frontline services as well, even though they are not quite protected in the same way that police officer pay is. That is the basis on which we are exploring, and we will move forward but we do need the clarity of the Spending Review, and what we desperately need, as Sophie’s already said, is long-term certainty. Annual budgeting makes it so, so hard for us to plan effectively.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I know it is difficult, and let us face it, it is difficult for every business out there at the moment, but if the worst-case scenario happens they need to know, in the background, what they are going to do. I am going to come to my colleague in a minute but can you give us some confidence that in the background, whilst you may not want to say what it is now, you do know what you would do if you do have to make those savings? With the greatest respect, I often hear that we are hoping the Government this and we are hoping the Government that, but we need to know that in the background, you know what you would do if you have to make those savings. Can we have the confidence to know that you know what you are going to be doing?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Yes, you should have that confidence. As I said, we have the priority-based budgeting process in place that will enable us, at a very, very granular level, to manage that. We have already taken the budgeting steps to pull our cost base down and as we go into next year, depending on the scale of those reductions, we will then determine the exact impact on our services. That might have to be in areas such as contact, it might have to be in the service level agreements we have around our forensics services and suchlike. These are all going to be really tough choices and that is why we are taking the hard decision now to focus on those areas that are organisationally difficult, such as estates, but that nevertheless have the potential to give us significant amounts of cost reduction.

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Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK, so you are telling us that frontline policing is not going to be affected, it is the things in the background?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Sorry, Chair, no, I am definitely not saying that. The language is really important here. Just to be very clear, the frontline service in the MPS is not only provided by police officers, but police officers are effectively protected - and quite rightly so - because of the Government’s growth programme, where we are committed to maintaining our baseline of officer numbers before the Government announced their programme in order to access new money. We have to protect that police officer pay. So, police officers are protected, yes, fantastic, but a whole bunch of other services sit around frontline policing such as taking 999 and 101 calls, dealing with forensics requests and scenes of crime officers, all of the intelligence that enables us to proactively tackle criminality across London, and our ability to hold people in detention. All of those are frontline services and yes, there could well be an impact in those areas if there is a requirement to make substantial cost reduction.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Just in terms of context setting, it is also important to remember that yes, of course you are focusing on the costs of COVID and what has happened since COVID in terms of the impact on our budgets, but we should not forget that already built into the budgets for this year there was £2 million worth of savings that needed to be found, and for next year there was £67 million worth of savings to be found. While we are focusing on the £45 million most likely case scenario, underneath that the MPS and MOPAC have all been planning to meet the savings targets that were already in the budgets. We should not forget that because £45 million, yes, that is really important, but actually when you add it up, we are looking for about £109 million worth of savings over two years.

That cannot but have an impact on the safety of Londoners because as Robin [Wilkinson] said, while police officer numbers will be protected, operationally, not having the right support, the contact centres not be able to be up and running if we have to find those savings and the Government does not come right and give the MPS the money they need, is going to have an impact. Back office costs and police staff sound sort of neutral in impact, but they are not neutral in impact. For every one police officer, you normally need about three support staff. If they start getting cut, police officers are going to have to do, worst-case scenario, jobs they should not be doing. It is almost de-civilianisation of the force, with police officers coming off the front line and into support staff roles. It will have that impact.

It is those additional savings to look at in the round that I think is really important, in terms of you as a Committee understanding the financial prospects of the MPS and the financial prospects of MOPAC.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I think we do. One of the issues we are concerned about is one minute we are being told the number of police officers is going to be protected, and then there is some muddiness in the water. Let me tell you, I do not think there is one Assembly Member who does not support our police and the numbers, I can say cross-party that that is the case, but on 17 June [2020] the Mayor said in a press release, “Unless Ministers act, the current number of police officers will need to be reduced,” but by another press release on 26 June, he was saying, “I am looking at how the reserves I have prudently built up could be used to protect frontline police services.” Both the Mayor’s original Budget and indeed the budget guidance are clear that drawdowns from reserves were always going to be used to protect frontline police officer numbers over the next two to three years. We just want clarity on how many numbers are going to be out there. I do accept that there is a --

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Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): We will not get that clarity until we have had the Spending Review and the allocation from the Government on police officer numbers. You can only spend reserves once. I know that sounds like a truism, but a reserve can only be spent once and in terms of maintaining police officer numbers going forward we have to have sustainable funding from the Government.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I hear what you say, but when we have conflicting press releases from 17 June [2020] to 26 June, that does not make it a very clear situation. I am going to hand over to my colleague, Assembly Member Duvall.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): Look, I understand the detailed work that is taking place around this budget but back to basics, are we just passively waiting for the Spending Review or are we actively lobbying with Government? Can you tell me whether MOPAC has met with Government Ministers to appraise them of the emergency crisis that we could face if it all goes wrong, or have we met with the Home Office? The same goes for the MPS. What meetings are you having with your colleagues who are putting briefings in front of Ministers about the situation we face? I think the most powerful evidence is the role of business rates in supporting policing, and that is one thing that they need to be aware of when they finally take their decisions.

Just for the sake of clarity, I think, not just to help the Chairman but in my own mind, because it is a people organisation - it is based on people rather than kit in terms of the biggest, largest expenditure - there must be a long-term threat to, as the Deputy Mayor has said, the type of policing that we get. If you extract police officers to do some support tasks or if you do not have enough cars for them to drive around in, there is a limit to how much patrolling they can do and how effective they can be. That is not talking against patrols. It will have an impact on policing, but it will have, ultimately, an impact on numbers if we do not get these foundations right during this particularly challenging time.

All the information that the Deputy Mayor has said I am taking as read, we have to get some clarity on the way forward. But before that, I want to be aware: is Government fully aware of the situation and the steps we have taken in the past? What meetings have taken place? I have not read about any emergency delegation meetings to the Home Secretary. I have not heard London Members of Parliament (MPs), both Conservative and Labour -- is there a Liberal Democrat one? I cannot remember.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Several.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): Several. I have not heard MPs making the case for policing in London. I do not mind who they are. We have a Green [Party] MP who happens to be for Brighton. They can make the case for national policing. I suspect there are a number of police services in a very similar situation. Someone has to start banging on the door, even during these challenging times, Chair. Maybe someone could quickly answer that for me.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): In relation to City Hall, and obviously Robin [Wilkinson] can talk in terms of the MPS themselves, the Mayor wrote to the Home Secretary on 1 July [2020] absolutely outlining the case in relation to what the problems were, not only around the shortfall because of COVID but also making the case for proper funding of the National and International Capital Cities (NICC) grant, which, as we all know, is about £159 million underfunded for the MPS.

I have also been on calls with the Policing Minister [Minister of State for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service], Kit Malthouse MP, putting the case for London, alongside other Police and Crime Commissioners across the country. I do not think the Home Office is in any doubt as to what the problems are and what the situation is

Page 16 in London in relation to funding. Of course, we are putting together and will be soon releasing a bid on the Spending Review which will be very clearly setting out what London needs, not just in relation to policing but obviously other bits of City Hall as well. There is no doubt that the Home Office and the Government are well aware of what the issues are in London. We have been lobbying and we will continue to lobby.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): In terms of the work with our partners who could also lobby for us, much as they might have their own financial difficulties, I would imagine the difficulties we face on child protection issues, particularly as we start to move and deploy resources around the MPS, would place even more pressure back on our colleagues working in those areas, both in the health sector and local government sector. Can we get them to come on board? We do help and try to support local government finance. I think we just need to make the case much more widely in terms of the public’s concern. I do not say it lightly about MPs being involved because I think, ultimately, they should be the voice of London in Parliament and within those national settings when policies are being made that have such a profound impact on us.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you. Assembly Member Pidgeon.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Thank you very much, Chair. You were just talking about police officers maybe being forced to do roles which really should be police staff. I know there is a huge amount of police officer time involved in the transcription of evidence that is given. I am wondering what work the MPS and MOPAC have done - this is for Robin and maybe you, Sophie - to investigate potential financial benefits of using things like automated Police transcription technology, which I know other police forces have been considering. This might be part of your savings measures.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I do not know if Robin [Wilkinson] wants to come in here, but I know the MPS has looked at automatic transcription services but - this is from memory - they have not yet found a transcription service that is of good enough quality to get up to the evidential baseline that you need. The MPS has invested in other technology to help in terms of administrative costs. I have just signed off a decision - this sounds a little bit modern age - to invest in robotics, which is basically so that people do not have to key in the same information a number of times. It automatically gets transferred into different databases. That absolutely will free up time. It will not free up people in terms of what we call cashable savings; it will free up the time of that person so that they can carry on, because their work is still mounting, and do other work. The MPS is absolutely looking to invest in new technology and new infrastructure that will enable them to free up staff time.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Yes, thanks, and that is really helpful, Sophie, as well. Just to reinforce the point, we are always looking for these opportunities to do this. I am happy to have a look, and I will write to the Committee, if we are using any transcription services. At the moment my understanding is the same as Sophie’s, that we are exploring but have not yet got to a level of confidence. There are a number of other areas, such as search and review, where we are, again, using technology to help us to search multiple types of evidence, but because of the challenges we face and the need to ensure that we are budgeting carefully this year to offset the cost of COVID, we have paused investments that we were otherwise wanting to make in some digital transformation. It is one of the tensions that we have, the ability to be able to continue to invest in new technology at the same time as having core budget challenges.

The other thing just to flag up, and we are acutely aware of this risk as well, is that investing in technology that frees up police officer time is great in terms of making police officers more effective but because of the lock on police officer numbers it is not a cashable saving. If we are in a state of having to drive substantial cashable

Page 17 savings, we might have to divert our innovation effort into those aspects that can make the processes linked to police staff even more efficient, so that we can spend less on police staff and, if you like, spend less on making police officers more productive. That is one of the tensions that I think we will have over the next few months.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Thank you. In terms of forensics, you mentioned earlier that you may have to start looking at your service level agreements for the different forensic services. We heard only last week at the Police [and Crime] Committee that digital forensics, I think, have managed to get the time to get some information back from 12 months to nine months, and we hear of people waiting years to go to court for rape and serious sexual offences. What on earth is your service level agreement if that is acceptable, and are you going to have to potentially invest more in forensics rather than be looking to cut it down in order that you can provide the police service that we need for Londoners?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Sophie, shall I start on that? Of course, the answer is we want to invest more. Of course, the answer is that we want a service that enables us to achieve justice and get cases in front of the criminal justice system as quickly as possible. You will know as well as I do the huge growth that there has been in digital forensics and the fact that the MPS has been able to innovate and explore different ways to enable us to respond to that. But we are in potentially difficult financial times and there will have to be tough choices. It would not be a desire for us not to invest in forensics or to cut any service in forensics, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that there are few places for us to go now that do not have a direct impact on service in one shape or another.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK. Thank you very much.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you very much.

Unmesh Desai AM: Chair, I was going to ask this later on but since reference has been made to the NICC grant, can I ask a couple of questions now?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Just keep it at that because we will keep to time.

Unmesh Desai AM: Yes. Deputy Mayor, you talked about the MPS being underfunded by some £159 million in respect to NICC. That is one side of the coin, but the other side is special grants. How much does the Home Office underfund the MPS in terms of special grants?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Robin [Wilkinson] will have more of the detail on this but in terms of allocations of special grants, for example, for the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests last October [2019], the MPS - I am just trying to find the figures - put in a figure but they were underfunded by, I think, about £9 million on the XR protests. As I have already said, in terms of COVID, we are expecting that to be underfunded. Each time a special grant is put in the MPS does not get 100% of that allocation back, and while each particular underfunding may not sound a lot, when you add it all up, it does add up to a lot of money. It is a real problem.

As we have discussed many times at the Police and Crime Committee, and I think we have discussed at this Committee as well, there is a fundamental problem around special grant from the Government because technically you need to be spending 1% of your budget in order to be able to bid for a special grant. For the MPS that is a very large amount of money, so we do need the rules changing on special grant.

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The Home Officer Minister, Kit Malthouse [MP], recently wrote out to forces saying that they were no longer going to be so generous on special grants and no longer provide all the money that was being expected on special grants. The MPS is losing out. I do not have all the figures - I do not know if Robin has the figures - in relation to other bids that have gone into the Home Office that have been underfunded.

Unmesh Desai AM: Do you or one of your officers have a figure for how much has been refused to the MPS in terms of special grant for the year 2019/20?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I do not have that in front of me. Do you have that? I do not have that.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Shall I bring Ian in on this?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes. Do you have the figures, Ian?

Ian Percival (Finance Director, Metropolitan Police Service): Yes, we do. Of the grants we put in last year, the two main ones where we had shortfalls were, as Sophie said, on XR we had a £9 million shortfall, and also on the [United States of America] President’s visit we had a £2.1 million shortfall. Those are the two areas where we received less money than requested.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): The review of special grant that the Home Office announced a number of months ago obviously is critically important to us. If there is any sense of us not having access to that funding for major events which happen regularly in London, and if the Government continues to underfund NICC, then we will have to somehow make provision elsewhere for these scenarios, which will put further pressure on our revenue budget.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. Thank you very much.

Unmesh Desai AM: Hopefully, this will save us time in the next section.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes, we will, thank you. We are coming on to the next section and it is going to be led by my colleague, Onkar Sahota [AM].

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Good morning. Look, we have heard about some of the challenges faced by the MPS and MOPAC, but how does MOPAC plan to close the 2020/21 budget gap in a financially sustainable way?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): In relation to the savings that MOPAC has to provide out of the MOPAC budget, not the MPS budget, for this year, we are planning at the moment for that to be around £7.5 million, with the MPS providing the rest of the savings that are having to be provided for this year on the most likely scenario.

In relation to how we are doing that, as I said at the beginning, some of the costs that we expected to have incurred by now have not been incurred because of COVID. In terms of the new growth funds that the Mayor put aside, those services have not been able to get up and running because of COVID so we are reprofiling that and getting some savings out of that for this year. There has also been a freeze on vacancies within MOPAC so that we can make some savings against the salary budget and we expect that to be about £500,000 by the end of the year. We are providing that money in terms of, for this year, those savings in that way.

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There is lot of work happening internally, led by the Chief Executive and Jo Moore [interim Chief Financial Officer, MOPAC], in relation to looking at a sustainable way forward for these budget reductions, starting from next year. In-year savings are difficult like that, so you do have to find some one-off savings, but there is a review of internal structures in MOPAC happening at the moment. We are having to look at how we provide those savings sustainably going forward in the years to come, and that is what we are doing at the moment.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: When do you expect to publish your indicative plan to close the budget? When are you going to publish the plan?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): In relation to next year, we are building the budgets with the MPS and we will publish those plans in the same way as we do every year. We will put our budget proposal towards the end of -- I think it is 30 November that is the budget deadline. We will do that. As soon as the Mayor’s guidance came out in June [2020] we started to plan for that, and we are doing some very intense work at the moment. We will be publishing our budget proposals by the end of November.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Thank you. To what extent will MOPAC consider more fundamental reforms like reorganisation to address the long-term budget pressures?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): With the MOPAC budget you have to be really clear about what we call controllable spend and uncontrollable spend. A large proportion of the MOPAC budget comes in and goes straight back out. It is funding that we commission, but we have already commissioned it, we are already committed and some of the funding is ringfenced from Government. Our controllable spend is actually quite a small proportion of the MOPAC budget, and it is within that that we are looking at how we can provide the savings going forward for the next financial year.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Of course, Sophie, earlier you said that a reserve is something you can only spend once. How are you ensuring that the money you are using from reserve funds is spent in a sustainable way?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): The reserves are always kept under review because you have to make sure that you have sufficient reserve, depending on the size of the budget, to make sure that you do not whittle it down and that general reserves, which are there and should be used in an emergency, should be drawn down in an emergency, are still there. That is always kept under review, and always has been, by the Chief Finance Officer. At the moment we do draw down on some of the reserves and we plan to draw down on some of the reserves. With some of the services that we commission, I think about £3 million of the reserves is a planned drawdown. Then obviously there will be some one-offs from reserves. We publish a Reserves Strategy on an annual basis, and it is something that is always kept under review.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Just finally, I know that the Commissioner [of Police of the Metropolis] and the Mayor have continued to challenge the Government on the national funding formula, which falls short of what London needs. Can you provide me with an update on the latest developments in this area and how important national funding is from the Government to the MPS?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): My understanding of the review of the national funding formula is that I do not know where the Government are now, but last time I discussed it they were looking at the Spending Review and then they may come on to the national funding formula. As you know, a couple of years ago they did attempt to look at the national funding formula, but it was all withdrawn because London was going to be so unfairly impacted by the changes in funding formula. If and when they do look at

Page 20 the national funding formula, clearly, as before, we worked very collaboratively with the MPS to put forward a really strong case for London and we will do that again, but there is no indication at the moment that the change to the funding formula will come before the Spending Review. It cannot come before the Spending Review because there has been no preparatory work. It would be impossible for them to be able to do that.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Thank you, Chair.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you. Before we go on to the next little bit - perhaps it is best to ask Sophie - has the Mayor given any indication as to which areas he believes should be considered to meet the savings targets?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): In terms of MOPAC’s funding?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Slightly turning it around a little bit, the priority in terms of protecting the MOPAC budget and protecting the spend is absolutely around those services that help us to tackle violence. We are looking to protect as much as possible any of the work that we do and the work of the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in tackling violence. The VRU is being protected at the moment. We are looking for the savings elsewhere. In answer to your question, it is more, “These are my priorities, you need to find savings elsewhere”.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes. We will talk about the VRU later, that is another thing completely, but he has not given you any indication as to where he thinks savings should be made?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): In terms of budgeting, he has been very clear, as am I, what our priorities are. The priorities are in relation to protecting frontline services, the frontline police officers --and protecting the work that we do to tackle violence. In terms of then coming up with the savings reductions, clearly he has to be convinced, when we come forward with our budget proposal, that we are as efficient as possible, we have good value for money and that the savings that we will be offering up will not impact in terms of the work that we do in tackling violence.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK, fair enough. Thank you. The next question is from my colleague [Dr} Alison Moore [AM], please.

Dr Alison Moore AM: Thank you very much. Thank you, Sophie. I appreciate we all have huge aspiration for the police service but given the additional budget pressure facing the MPS, is the target of 6,000 additional police officers realistic and achievable over the medium-term?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I think it is realistic, it is achievable, and it is necessary. It is a target that the Commissioner [of Police of the Metropolis] has asked for and that she feels would be a fair share of the 20,000 officers that have been promised and committed nationally. She feels that it is needed for London in order to keep Londoners safe. So, yes, I do, and I think we have to continue to lobby for that and to remember that this is an operational judgment from the Commissioner as to how many additional police officers the MPS needs.

Dr Alison Moore AM: This was touched on earlier, but the announcement of the additional 20,000 officers nationally by Government was in July last year, and I appreciate it was before the COVID crisis but that is 15

Page 21 months ago. Has there been any update or any indication from Government about the future of those, but more importantly for us, actually, the London share of those officers and when we might expect to be able to see that? What is the impact of the uncertainty in the budget, in general? Any indications about the timescale for that?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): We have not had any public indication of the allocation for next year. We are still uncertain as to what we are going to get next year. We have had the allocation of 1,369 for this financial year, which we have achieved. The MPS have recruited to that. As I said before, for a budget of over £3 billion, it is an incredible uncertainty not to know, at this stage in the financial year and in budget-setting, how many officers you should be planning to recruit from April 2021. We are not that far away. Robin, I do not know if you want to come in here in terms of any indications of allocations.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Thank you, Sophie. We have not had anything formally. Our working assumption is that decisions are likely to be announced alongside any kind of Spending Review position. That is our working assumption, but that, again, is only four months before the start of the financial year, so we are having to guess and plan our recruitment pipeline such that we have the ability to grow at pace next year, on the working assumption that money comes through.

The additional point, Sophie, I would like to add to what you have said is that the critical thing for us is not necessarily just the money that we get for the police officer salary, because we are working on the assumption that any officers that Government allow us to recruit will be fully funded. What we need to focus on is the extra money that comes to enable the MPS to stay in shape with a bigger workforce. That means, as we said earlier, we need to be able to invest more in forensics, in detention and in all of the other services that enable officers to be efficient and effective. That is about having the fleet so that we can deploy people, the safety equipment for those officers, their body-worn video and suchlike. The debate we need to have with Government is not only the officers and the money we get for the officers, but the extra bits as well, in addition to funding the baseline increases and inflation. We need to keep the debate broad on all of those fronts.

Dr Alison Moore AM: By the time the Spending Review comes through, we are going to be 18 months down the line from the original suggestion and a number of months off the beginning of your budget year. I can see that that is really challenging. Robin, if I might stay with you - I would just like to have some clarity on this - you talked about not accelerating the recruitment of 600 officers this year. That constitutes the pause that has been talked about. Am I right that you are arguing that is creating savings against your plan for this year?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Yes.

Dr Alison Moore AM: What sort of quantum of savings are we looking at and how will that impact on your savings for next year?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Up to £15 million savings this year. I say up to partly because of the impact of COVID and also our desire to retain experience in the MPS. Our current officer numbers are above establishment, our turnover has dropped during COVID by over 50%, so we now have a pause on new recruits joining training until January next year so that we bring the numbers down, and then we will have smaller intakes in January, February and March [2021] so that we end the year at the budgeted position with the growth. That will deliver up to £15 million of savings. What, of course, it does do is it means we do not add pressure into next year by starting next year at an inflated rate if you like. It avoids us putting pressure into next year’s budget as well.

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But from a recruitment perspective, again, the one thing that any large recruitment machine needs is certainty and consistency, and a training machine needs a consistent flow of recruits coming through. This stop/start is very problematic for us.

Dr Alison Moore AM: Just to be clear, there will be some additional officers recruited in 2020/21. You talked about small numbers. Do you have a figure on that? How will that be funded?

Robin Wilkinson (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Our intention is to end this financial year with the amount of police officers that we were budgeted for at the end of the financial year, 32,300, there or thereabouts. That is where we are aiming to end the year. We are above that level at the moment. We will allow attrition to bring that number down through the rest of this calendar year and then we will reopen recruitment intake in January, February, and March [2021] to get us back to 32,300. Then we will plan on the assumption that we will get at least our funding formula allocation of the new officer growth next year. We will plan, therefore, to grow officer numbers through the course of the next financial year. But again, that is all assumptions and plans. Until we get an announcement from Government, it can only be that.

Dr Alison Moore AM: You probably cannot answer this in the context, but I am going to ask it anyway. How sustainable do you think that approach is, in financial terms, in the medium-term?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): It utterly depends on the Spending Review. The Government have a priority to increase police officer numbers, it is very welcome, and therefore it needs to be funded. Our working assumption is that Government must fund the investment that is necessary to make that so. The challenge, I think, will inevitably be in the baseline position and any kind of view about how extensive efficiency savings can be driven from policing and from the MPS to offset future inflation increases and suchlike, and that is where the challenge, I think, for us will be. From our point of view, we have driven £900 million of savings out of the MPS during austerity and therefore the ability to find true cashable efficiencies is now very challenging indeed. That is where we are into more service choices, I regret, as we go forward.

Dr Alison Moore AM: OK. Thank you, Chair.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you. Just a quick one to Sophie, if I may. In December [2019] you told this Committee that to maintain the 6,000 target in the budget, it was creating a funding gap of £362 million by 2023/24. Is that still the estimate, and, obviously, is that ultimately sustainable?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): That funding gap will have grown because of the savings that we are having to make. If you take the most likely scenario, it will have grown by £45 million in terms of the medium-term financial plan. Is that right, Jo? Do you want to come in here?

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Financial Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): I was going to say, Ian, do you want to come in on the gap, in terms of the breakdown of the gap between what is for police officer funding and the structural gap?

Ian Percival (Finance Director, Metropolitan Police Service): Yes, certainly. As you said, we have a requirement for the uplift of just over £300 million and further savings by 2023/24, with further savings to be identified of about £138 million, which would take the total gap in our published budget to about £455 million. That will now increase as a result of the reductions on the back of COVID.

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It is important also to establish, though, that the funding requirement for the uplift, as Robin [Wilkinson] talked about before, is based on our assumptions around 6,000 officers and based on some assumptions around the support costs required for officers. We absolutely need clarity around that because when we have that we will necessarily have to make some choices, or potentially cut our coat according to the size of the cloth that we get in terms of that funding.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Thank you, Ian. Just to be very clear, of course, if we did have true budget gaps, after the Spending Review and suchlike, of £300 million or £400 million, then of course at that stage we would not be able to have the level of police officers that we wanted, but in that case it would be the perverse and bizarre position of a Government ambition to grow without the baseline funding to support it. We are working on the assumption that more money will come our way. The question is how much, and the extent to which we will have to make choices around our services that are not driven by police officers.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK, thank you. Obviously, when money does come your way, we will be asking then what you are doing with it and be questioning you further. We are moving on now to my colleague, Assembly Member Pidgeon.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Thank you very much. Could I just clarify from the previous discussion, is recruitment for police staff and also for police officers currently frozen?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): For police staff we have a pause on recruitment at the moment, certainly until we have greater certainty on the outcome of the Spending Review. There is an exceptions process for that and that exceptions process is held at Management Board level, my level and the Assistant Commissioners’, so that if there are particular roles where we have to proceed, then we have a mechanism to do that, but broadly speaking, police staff recruitment is paused. To re-emphasise the point Sophie [Linden] made earlier, that does also include, therefore, staff recruitment into our contact centres, it does mean staff recruitment into forensics and elsewhere, because that is where the big blocks of police staff are.

On police officer recruitment, we are not bringing any extra intakes in to our training school until January [2020] because we have over-achieved this year already, we have already more than achieved our growth this year as a result of strong recruitment and a reduction in resignation and retirement rates. Of course, those numbers could change as individuals’ life choices are affected by COVID and we are currently doing a survey of our officers who could have retired but have chosen not to, to try to get a better understanding of their medium-term plans.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: That is very helpful. In terms of MOPAC, Deputy Mayor, has MOPAC frozen all recruitment at the moment?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): We are not recruiting to vacancies at the moment, while we look at the review of structures.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Did you recruit to the £69,000 to £75,000 personal assistant (PA) role, or did you choose not to at this time, given budget pressures?

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Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): It was not a PA role, it was a private secretary role, which, as you know, is a different skillset. No, that has not been filled at the moment and is part of a review of structures.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Good. I am pleased to hear that, thank you. Next question. You said at the beginning, Deputy Mayor, quite a lot about the commissioning process and what had happened, and I made notes on that. That was very clear. Clearly, some services have not been able to be delivered. Some, you said, have moved to online and you had some money to help support some of those groups to move online. How are you demonstrating value for money from your commissioning activities, given the COVID restrictions?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Jo [Moore] is probably better placed in terms of the reviews of the commissioning process. In terms of the additional funding that went in of £500,000 into the London Community Response Fund, those bids were all reviewed and assessed, and part of that will have been around value for money as well. In terms of additional money going out to support services, that would have been there. Jo, do you want to come in, just in terms of the work that you do?

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Financial Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): In terms of commissioning spend, all of our commissioning spend is either by grant agreement or a contract and all of those will have been through a tender and a bid process. Through that process is where we demonstrate value for money, and that will not have changed. If there is any requirement to change the way they deliver services, that will be picked up by the performance metrics they have to adhere to through their grant agreements or contract agreements. It is about assessing the bid at the outset, making sure that we are demonstrating value for money when we award the contracts, but then through performance metrics and potentially changing the way we measure performance as a result of COVID that we will continue to demonstrate that value for money throughout the whole process.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: How have you changed how you are measuring performance? I understand at the beginning, when you let a contract, you will have hopefully looked at value for money, but given people have had to change how they are delivering, how are you sure that it is still delivering what you really want it to?

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Financial Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): As I said, they are working closely with the providers, we are looking at where we need to possibly change those performance indicators. Some of them just cannot be delivered in the way that they were before, so we may need to change the indicator or maybe we just change the way we collect the date. There could be two different dimensions to that. We will continue to work with providers, and where we need to change performance indicators that will then be rewritten into the contracts and the grant agreements.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK. Can you give me a practical example of where you may have changed a performance measurement because of COVID and the service delivery being different?

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Financial Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): I cannot give you detail because that would be for the Director of Commissioning.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): If you look at, for example, the rescue and response service, I think we have had questions on county lines at the Police and Crime Committee but if you look, for example, at that, because of COVID and because of the restrictions, fewer young people were traveling on county lines, and also it meant that the rescue and response service was not able to go out and do

Page 25 so many rescues. That was a hiatus during COVID. Clearly, in terms of reviewing the contract around performance, that will be taken into consideration, rather than, “You were meant to do this number of rescues and you did not”. That is the type of detailed work that has taken place and will continue to take place in relation to all the commissioned services that have had to change the way in which they work.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK, exactly, thank you for that. One of your big areas you are saying you are protecting is the VRU. What are you doing to ensure that it is able to continue to deliver some of its services during COVID?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): It was the same processes we have for MOPAC commissioned services. The VRU spent a lot of time during COVID working with the services that they commission to support them in going online and to support them in the work that they are doing. It is very similar to the work that we have been doing and the work that has been across City Hall in supporting them to move from often face-to-face services to online services, and also to look at not just changing the way in which the service is delivered but also, especially at the moments when we were easing out of lockdown over the summer months, putting some additional funding in to pick up the extra demand in the system.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: I think, from my notes, there was some unspent budget from the VRU this year and you are just looking to carry that forward rather than put it into the budget savings target for this year. Is that correct, and what is your thinking there?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): There is unspent budget in the VRU and in MOPAC commissioned services. There is some that is underspent because of COVID and therefore reprofiling, and then there was planned underspend to be brought forward into the next financial year because of the way you commission one year at a time. You get given the allocation in one budget, but it is profiled over two to three years. There was a combination of that in the VRU budgets and the MOPAC budgets.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK, so you consciously decided not to pull any savings out of that, you are pushing it forward to deliver it in the next --

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Reprofiling it, yes, absolutely.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK. Thank you. I do not know if this is for you or it might be better for the MPS, but maybe you might comment on it because I am sure you have been asking questions on it. What is the latest position with the review into the MPS’s overtime rates?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Shall we let Robin [Wilkinson] or Ian [Percival] go first in terms of trying to --

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK, and then what you have been doing, because I am sure this is a budget line that you are conscious of.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Yes, sure, trying to control overtime.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Maybe Robin or Ian --

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Happy to. It is clear, part of the reason we are predicting slight overspend at the moment at the end of this year is because of

Page 26 overtime. All of the Assistant Commissioners have a clear focus on this and a clear plan. I chair a monthly Efficiency Steering Group in the MPS where controls on overtime and spend is one of the consistent themes.

It has been a challenging year operationally for the MPS, as you would expect. A number of factors are driving increased overtime expenditure: partly COVID in terms of ensuring that we are offsetting where we do have a loss of workforce linked to COVID restrictions, also because of our policing of demonstrations in central London, but also because it reflects very substantial and important operational work, particularly in serious and organised crime, where the Committee will know we still have a shortage of detectives. Our Specialist Crime unit has delivered some outstanding results this year and that has caused some extra overtime spend. We are clear we know where the overtime is coming from and we are balancing, all the while, the impact of sustaining strong operational performance with tight financial management. That is what we will continue to do. What we do not want is a blunt ban on all overtime, if you like, that then dents some very important operational outcomes.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Isn’t there a review being carried out looking at this? I understand where the pressures are, COVID, events and so on, but isn’t there a detailed review looking at this?

Robin Wilkinson (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): There is detailed scrutiny in our normal monthly budget management processes. That is the scrutiny that is taking place and will continue to take place, both in terms of us being able to properly set a level for overtime for future years, and control spend this year. Interestingly, another area that is driving an uptick in overtime is the fact that we have so many new recruits coming through, which is great and fantastic, but again the support that is needed to enable them to become effective pulls some pressure into the core service. But you can be assured that this has the highest level of oversight in the MPS, the highest level of scrutiny, and getting that balance right, as I said, between strong operational performance and budget control is what we are trying to achieve.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Thank you. Deputy Mayor, what are you doing to ensure the MPS are looking at trying to reduce, where they can, some of this overtime, which is a huge budget pressure?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): It is a budget pressure, there is no getting away from it. Every year it is a massive budget pressure, overtime. In terms of what we in MOPAC do and what I do, there are the quarterly performance reports, which report on all the financial aspects, including overtime, and that is scrutinised quite carefully internally and in regular meetings with the MPS, not just between myself and the senior leadership of the MPS but between Ian Percival as part of Jo Moore’s work.

Also, that then feeds into the Oversight Board, which is the quarterly board that I chair with the Commissioner [of Police of the Metropolis]. In fact, I have a meeting later with Robin [Wilkinson]. We have a regular series of bilaterals. This afternoon I have a bilateral meeting with Robin to go through recruitment, to go through financial aspects, and then tomorrow morning, for example, I have my quarterly Oversight Board, where finances and the quarterly performance report are on the agenda. It is through that oversight and that questioning around overtime that I fulfil my roles and duties in terms of oversight of the MPS.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Lovely, thank you very much. Thank you, Chair.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you. Before I bring my next colleague in, Sophie, if I can go back, please, to the VRU. Now, you earlier said that where the Mayor does not want to take back money or look at savings is the VRU, and we have to accept that the VRU is his flagship body for reducing crime, particularly among young people. Yet it underspent, as we have just talked about, by £4.4 million in 2019/20 and most of

Page 27 those funds were carried forward into this year. That is nearly a third of its budget. I am concerned as to why that keeps happening. You are looking at another carry forward, and yet I am sure earlier today you said that he would be putting more money into the VRU. Is that correct?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): As I said, there is a question of profiling in spend in terms of contracts, profiling and planned profiling, and then there has been some underspend this year because of COVID. That will be reprofiled. We are not looking to take savings from the VRU for this financial year and we will look to protect it for the next financial year as well.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): It is all very well protecting it and I have no objection to that, but my point is it keeps coming in with underspends. If it is supposed to be the answer to everything, the VRU, which the Mayor was saying, and you were saying earlier how important it is, why are there such massive underspends? Does it need the money it has if it is just not spending it?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): I am just going to have to say what I have said before in terms of profiling of spend and making sure that you are able to commission services that are not stood up one year and then stood down the next. There is that reprofiling taking place. Also, I would just caution that the VRU is an important unit doing very important work in terms of prevention and early intervention into violence, but it is not the only way in which the Mayor is investing into violence reduction. There is the £45 million Young Londoners Fund, again around prevention and diversion.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Then, of course, there is the MPS, in which the Mayor has invested --

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes, I accept that.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): -- more than any other Mayor and has put extra funding in to ensure there are more police officers out there tackling violence. The VRU is part of a wider strategy, a public health strategy if you want, to tackling violence.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): If I can bring you back. We could sit here and talk about all the different methods, I am sure. I am just concerned, and have been, as some of my colleagues are also, about the VRU in general. If it is the panacea to all our problems, I am just concerned that for the second year, there are underspends. If it is so vital that it is there, and I accept that it could be, I just do not understand why it keeps coming in in underspends. Why are there not areas that the money could be put in? But I have heard your answer, the same answer twice, so I will not push you on that again. I will now move on to my colleague, Tony Devenish [AM], please, for your questions.

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Financial Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): Chair --

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Jo will just come in on that.

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Financial Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): Would you mind if I just came in on the VRU point and the value for money point that your colleague raised earlier? It is really important that we do not just get money out the door, that we do demonstrate value for money. Where commissioning is concerned it is very different than, say, providing a service. Commissioning is very different.

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One of the really important parts about commissioning is the evidence and insight, and that you can properly evaluate that what you are putting your money into is going to deliver the outcomes that you need. That process is not like delivering normal services. It takes a while to gather that evidence and that insight and to be really clear. What the VRU is targeting are different approaches, and it has to be clear, before it spends public money, that those approaches it is taking are going to deliver the outcomes it thinks, through evidence, insight and evaluation.

What the Deputy Mayor has taken recently is a number of decisions around the VRU, so I am hoping that you will be able to see, by quarter two and quarter three, the spend actually being committed and coming through. But as I said, I reiterate again, commissioning services is very different, and we need to be clear that the outputs and the outcomes we want to achieve are going to be achieved before we give money to providers. Because of the complexity around violence reduction, it is important that we are spending the money in the right way rather than rushing to get it out the door.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I am thrilled to hear somebody saying that they want to make sure they are looking after taxpayers’ money. I approve of that 100% and I applaud that, as I would do for anybody coming in front of this Committee, absolutely. My point is it has not been there for five minutes, it has been there for a lot longer. It is supposed to be the answer to so many of the problems out there. If there are not many places that you could put that commissioning into, then one has to look at the actual funding for that unit. It has gone on into the second year of underspends. My question is: is that possibly the best vehicle to deliver the service that we need? But we are just talking about finances now. I take on board your point, which I thoroughly approve of, but I do not approve of something being held up as a flagship when it is just being underspent.

I think somebody wants to come in. Siân, do you want to come in on that point?

Siân Berry AM: I think your questions have been really good and useful on this point, and I wanted to ask the Deputy Mayor whether she is looking at alternative uses for the underspends in this coming year given that there is the opportunity to refill and add more to the VRU’s budget in future years to make up for this. We know that councils are struggling at the moment in respect of their budgets in general because of the amount of expenses they have had around the coronavirus. There are risks to council youth services, which are pursuing the same goals as the VRU. We know that some of the charities and voluntary sector bodies that are doing this work are also struggling, so you may be commissioning work off them, but they are losing some of their charitable income. Are you exploring ways in which you might use underspends to fill those kinds of gaps?

I have written to the Government as part of the Spending Review asking for the restoration of youth service budgets, essentially. It does not look good if budgets we have in City Hall are going underspent while we are asking for that extra investment.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): As I said, the underspend that we are looking at for this financial year is nearly all due to the COVID pandemic and that has been reprofiled in terms of making sure that the services that needed to happen, that are needed and were going to be invested in by the VRU, will continue. It is a question of reprofiling, it is not a question of underspending and being unable to spend money. Those services are pan-London services --

Siân Berry AM: I know, but I am pointing out that there are underspends and in-year cuts happening in other, related services you could usefully use that money for.

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Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Sorry, I did not catch what you said.

Siân Berry AM: I am pointing out that elsewhere in the field, in related services, possibly ones which you are also committing money to, there are in-year budget crises already happening, and you could potentially use that money to help fill gaps in services that already exist. That is not about getting evidence for future work, that is literally something that does work that may not happen if we do not help.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): The money that has been allocated to the VRU is being reprofiled at the moment. It has not been spent in the way it was projected to be spent at the beginning of this financial year because of the COVID crisis. It is going to be spent, there is absolutely no doubt about that, and it will be spent on focused work on violence reduction. For example, I have just signed off a decision for over £3 million worth of spend for a really good project in the hotspot areas of London to work with communities in their work in preventing violence. That is £3 million of spend just signed off. There has also just been additional money for pupil referral units and additional money being spent on mentoring.

It is coming through, and I think that given there has been COVID in the first few months of this financial year, given the pandemic, there has been a fantastic effort to ensure that that money is being spent and will be spent properly and appropriately. That money, in terms of focusing, is really important work for the VRU. The pandemic is creating this problem at the moment, the problem over the last couple of months, and that is being worked through.

Siân Berry AM: Deputy Mayor, my question is not the same question as Assembly Member Hall asked you, but that was the same answer. I am really asking about the wider work. Part of the VRU’s work is to work with a network of different organisations who are supporting violence reduction initiatives, and I am just saying that there is wider pressure in that network that potentially this year’s underspend could be used for. Then you would have to replenish budgets in future years.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): In terms of the pressures in the violence reduction network and pressures with community organisations, absolutely, COVID has created some of those pressures and there are those pressures. By the Mayor through the London Community Response Fund, millions of pounds worth of money has been put into community projects to enable them to overcome those problems and those gaps. There has been across MOPAC, across the VRU and across City Hall, that investment in community projects to try to fill some of the problems and fill some of the gaps that you are talking about. It is not necessary to look at the VRU budget in order to do that.

If you are asking whether the Mayor should step into the rather large chasm that is developing in boroughs because of the financial problems that they are experiencing - and we in City Hall are experiencing the same - the Mayor cannot fill that gap. He cannot fill that gap. That gap is going to have to come from central Government because it is so large. It is right and proper that the work of the VRU, which is work that is really necessary, needs to happen, just needs to be reprofiled slightly and is coming through, continues because it is focused on the hotspot areas, focused on early intervention and prevention and focused on that partnership work. That work will continue.

Siân Berry AM: OK. Yes, we understand that point. Thank you. I will leave that there.

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Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you for your intervention, Assembly Member Berry. I could not agree with you more. Different Committees should be looking at the VRU and its spend. OK. The next questions are from Assembly Member Devenish.

Tony Devenish AM: Good morning, Chairman. Can I start by asking please for those who answer the questions to try to be specific so that I can actually learn more than I already have in the well-written papers?

My first question is: as a key way of closing the gap, what can the MPS itself do to maintain its previous levels of income generation, please? Who wants to start?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): I am happy to start. Ian [Percival] may well want to come in as well. We get a lot of income, as you know, trying to be specific here, from the airports, from Transport for London (TfL) and from local authorities. Quite often, that is about buying police officer time for us. Of those areas, quite a number of those are challenged at the moment and some of our budget gaps this year are driven by a loss of income. We are working with all of those partners who buy services from us to ensure that we know about their future long-term plans and suchlike, but a number of those are inevitably challenged by COVID. It is just a fact that they are, particularly the airports and elsewhere, potentially going to continue to be challenged for some time to come.

The challenge for us, Mr Devenish, is that because of the baseline position that the Government has set with police officers, at the moment that loss of income is a pressure on our budget because we are having to hold police officer numbers at their pre-baseline level.

Tony Devenish AM: I understand all that, but I do not really have anything specific what you are going to do about it. I will ask the question a slightly different way. How is the MPS planning to recoup its income lost over the last few months?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Fundamentally, we will not recoup our income lost over the last few months. As I said, that income is at the moment coming through the provision of police officer services to a number of providers. There is not really a response that says we can look elsewhere for that income to be recouped.

What we are doing is talking to the providers, to the airports, to TfL and to local authorities so that we understand their plans and their future requirements. Of course, where there are opportunities for us recouping money and selling our services elsewhere, we will explore them. Ian may well have some ideas and some specifics where we are doing that at the moment. However, I am afraid that the challenge we have is that where we have been providing those services in the past, there is just a lower need for those services at the moment, particularly for the airports. That is a challenge for us.

Ian Percival (Finance Director, Metropolitan Police Service): If I can add to Robin’s point there, in terms of specifics of what we are doing, we talked earlier and the Deputy Mayor mentioned the pressure in-year, we think, in the region of about £50 million due to COVID. Part of that £50 million is that we estimate that we will lose some income. Therefore, what we are doing is looking at our expenditure this year in the ways that we have been through previously in order to come in with a balanced budget. As Robin said, there are some bits of income that as a result of COVID we have lost, and we will not be able to recoup that income this year.

Tony Devenish AM: We all agree that you have lost income. What we are trying to do with this question is understand how you are going to fill the gap. The other way of asking the question is: what other options for

Page 31 income generation are being considered by the MPS? What I am looking for is proposed solutions. We all agree there is a hole. How are you going to fill it?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Being blunt back, I do not believe we will fill the hole that we currently have in income generation through alternative income generation sources. I just do not believe that is a likely or a viable proposition, which is why we are having to look at other measures for reducing our spend to offset that reduction.

We are, for example, looking at whether or not there are other areas of London, other business districts or whatever where we might be able to have other partners who would want to buy our services, but you know as well as I do - and there were questions from Siân Berry [AM] just before talking about the challenges that many partners are facing on funding - that they are struggling financially as well as us. I do not have a ready-made answer because I do not believe there is an answer that will respond to your direct question on this in the way that you are looking for at this time, I am afraid.

Tony Devenish AM: OK. We are four years into this mayoral term. We have raised a lot of these points before. As Regeneration [Committee] Chair, a couple of years ago I did ask these questions, as I know many other Members have done.

I will put it a third and final way, Chairman: what progress has been made over the past year or indeed the past four years in terms of further blue-light collaboration, either regarding sharing resources or looking to maximise income or commercial opportunities? These issues are not all just COVID-driven. We all have to use, as the Chairman says, taxpayers’ money better.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): We do work, talk regularly and engage with the London Ambulance Service (LAS) and the London Fire Brigade (LFB). We are looking and continue to look at opportunities for sharing real estate. There are some examples of that nearing conclusion. As we say, we are looking at who is best placed to provide some services, for example, responses when people are concerned about not having seen neighbours recently and suchlike. We are looking at who is best placed to provide those services. You can be reassured that those conversations are active and going well and will continue. We will continue on those kinds of conversations.

Tony Devenish AM: Thank you. My final point - and I have made this point on a number of Committees over the years - is that you really need one person responsible for driving savings across all the blue-light services because, otherwise, I am still not very clear.

My final question really is to the Deputy Mayor. Who is actually responsible for the lack of progress in terms of driving innovation and costs savings?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): In terms of collaboration across City Hall, since I have been Deputy Mayor, the change in terms of collaboration across City Hall and in terms of emergency services, there has been a step change in collaboration. Nobody is responsible for a lack of progress. Does that mean there is more collaboration and more savings to be --

Tony Devenish AM: Can you give me a specific example rather than generalities, with respect?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): There is now a Group Collaboration Board that the MPS, the LFB and all of the mayoral family sits on. They look at all the procurements to check and see if

Page 32 there are any opportunities for collaboration. We ourselves share services with the GLA on human resources (HR) and information technology (IT) and with TfL on procurement and legal services. Over the coming months, that collaboration will increase. The MPS already collaborates with the policing sector as well. It is not just in terms of emergency services. There is collaboration nationally with other forces. I do not have the examples in front of me, but I can give you some examples of where there has been collaboration.

There has been progress in this. Of course there is more progress that needs to be made, but there has been a step-change since I got here in terms of collaboration and the mayoral family working together not just to make its services more efficient but to make them of better quality as well.

Tony Devenish AM: Can I ask, Deputy Mayor, that you write to the Committee with some specifics? I am still not convinced, but I will leave it there. Thank you, Chairman.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. Thank you. Before we move on, it is probably me and I probably missed it. Robin Wilkinson will probably be able to answer. What is the top line of income generation? What sort of money are we looking at?

Robin Wilkinson (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): I will ask Ian to come back to you on that. Do you want to go on to the next question and then we will come back with the answer to that after the next batch of questions, Chairman?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Ballpark would do. You must have a rough idea.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Ian is trying to get it.

Ian Percival (Finance Director, Metropolitan Police Service): It about £270 million-odd of other income.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): That is quite a sizable amount, more than I had anticipated. Do you think you could send the Committee, please, a top-line list of this income generation so that we get a taste of where this sort of money is coming from and understand exactly? We will look at it and will know immediately the ones that could be affected by COVID. If you could send us that for this year in-year and of course the figures last year so that we can compare them, I am sure the Committee would find that really helpful. Thank you.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): Can I just come in very quickly? In terms of income that has been lost, what is the current status of the grant or the commissioning from TfL of your services on transport? I understand that there must be an issue about whether that is coming forward. It must be there. What is the current status of that?

Ian Percival (Finance Director, Metropolitan Police Service): Sorry, yes. Currently we are talking with TfL. There is an expectation at the moment - I do not have the full figures in front of me and so we will get back to you - that there will be a slight shortfall on our income this year from TfL. I am afraid I do not have that exact figure in front of me, though.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): Would that be due to the negotiations that TfL and the Government are about to do? Look, TfL has a lot to ask of the Government. The most important one and the most important service is protection and community safety of passengers on London transport services. I know there is transport policing, but also the MPS’s contribution to that is pretty significant. I would hate that to be lost in

Page 33 the detail of the others. If you could just drop us a note of financially where that is and maybe, we will pick that up at the Police and Crime Committee as well.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): I am very happy to do that. I would reinforce the point that most of our income is funding police officer posts for specific services, whether that is at the Palace of Westminster, at the airports or on the transport system. That is what the income is buying. We want to retain that income where we possibly can.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): Sorry, very quickly again, Chairman, the most important aspect of that would be some of the arrangements that you have with local government, which presumably are in question for the future about whether they can continue or even strike new deals. Is that a significant part of that? I do not want to pre-empt the Chairman, but just in my own mind is that a major proportion of that income generation?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Fortunately, it is not the major point, but of course it is important. All of it is important, Chairman, and we are very happy to set out where the income comes from for what services so that the Committee has a very clear understanding of that.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Thank you.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes. I confess that we were not as clear as we thought we were on that. That is a major sum and it will be interesting for us to look into that and to see how it feeds into your top-line figures all together. Thank you for that.

We are well on time. Well done, Committee. We are now moving on to Assembly Member Berry. First of all, apologies because your first question was semi-answered by Assembly Member Desai earlier.

Siân Berry AM: That is fine.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): If you would like to proceed with the others? Thank you.

Siân Berry AM: Yes. The first question that I was preparing to ask was essentially about your relationship with the Government and recovering costs associated with unplanned events. There was quite a lot of discussion about that earlier that I will not go into, but there is one question that, as you have the finance people here, it would be really useful to get some answers on. We have been looking for clarity about the immediate versus ongoing costs of policing major protests. What we have seen in recent years is major protests where there is a much higher number of arrests and subsequent court cases than in previous years. We have been trying to tease out how much of the reported costs are immediate policing overtime costs versus the ongoing costs of servicing the court cases that result.

I wondered, within the financing of this, do you record that separately? We have an outstanding query from January [2020] from the Police and Crime Committee where we ask for a bit of a breakdown. We have not received this yet and I am wondering if that is particularly difficult to do or whether you have ways of recording what is being spent on judicial proceedings as opposed to operations.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): I do not know. Ian may come in. I do not know off top of my head. We can break down the amount of money we spend on our criminal justice processes. What I do not know is if we can separate out from that overall spend the extra

Page 34 amount that is being incurred, if you like, if there is an extra amount, through taking cases through the system linked to protests. I am looking at Ian to know whether we do know that off the top of our heads but, if not, I can look it up.

Siân Berry AM: I was wondering if we could ask you directly separately about that rather than going via the Police and Crime Committee. Because it is such a specialist financial question, it might be better to send you a separate query. We have been waiting and it is an interesting topic.

Moving on to capital questions, which is my next section, I have seen that in the out-turn for the previous year you had a £24.6 million underspend. Then, looking at the quarter one monitoring report - I do not know if you have that in front of you - it appears that we already have a variance of £65.9 million on the current year just from quarter one. That is quite a big change.

The different categories of capital expenditure are on page 34 of the quarterly report. It is a bit unclear from the differences in the bars in the diagram and the percentages reported in the numbers which are the bigger areas of underspend. I was hoping you could just lay out for us which are the major areas that have suffered from underspend as a result of the coronavirus crisis and what programmes they represent. It appears to be the Transformation Programme, digital policing, which is a worry, and property services, but it is a little bit unclear from the numbers from quarter one which are the higher.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): OK. I will start if I may. The biggest change that we will be reprofiling is in respect of our estate plan and that is partly due to COVID but not significantly due to COVID. These things are long in the planning and we have to be very precise in the budget reports about the quarter in which we expect that to come on and sometimes that moves for very good reasons.

For example, we have a set of refurbishments of our Basic Command Unit (BCU) buildings taking place at the moment. We were expecting to do more at once, but we decided to split those into two halves and we now need to reprofile that spend and suchlike. You will see that coming through in the next quarterly report coming forward.

There has also been some slight reprofiling of our spending on our big IT programmes. Connect is our big replacement of our core policing systems and there is just a contractual point about when that spend is due.

Siân Berry AM: Sorry, just to clarify, you are replacing the servers and all of the really core infrastructure. Is that right?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): No, it is not hardware. We are replacing seven of our core policing systems, where we are holding the data, if you like, the system where we hold and process our core policing data. At the moment, we have seven old legacy systems and, as every other police force in the country now has an integrated system, so will we. It is a difficult programme to land but, going back to earlier parts of this conversation, it will mean that we are more efficient at inputting data once, not multiple times, and more effective because we will be able to derive better information from that system.

We are also, as you know, replacing our command-and-control system as well. That is big and complex and important that we get that right.

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Siân Berry AM: One of the things that we have been concerned about is the digital forensics, as it were, the replacement of that. On that, we asked in July 2019 for a plan of when the timescales were going to be for replacing all the digital forensics equipment in the BCUs, which help with a lot of investigations like rape and sexual assault, which we have been really concerned about delays on. Again, we do not have the answer back to that and so we do not know what the planned programme was.

Has that been delayed by anything that is in those underspends? That is digital policing, I believe.

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): A response went back to the Committee in January [2020]. I understood only this morning that it had not actually got through to the Committee. There is a response from January of this year to answer some of that.

There is a lot happening in this space. We do now have digital kiosks in all of our BCUs to enable officers to download information more effectively. We are implementing search and review. This is the ability for us to use technology to explore digital data rather than officers having to download, print and work through. Again, it is a more effective and significantly more efficient way of doing it.

We are introducing and improving our overall digital architecture for forensics and that programme is progressing well as we speak. We have, as you know already, rolled out mobile fingerprinting. Across our forensics area there is good ongoing progress and we will want to continue to do that, particularly as new technology comes our way.

There are real improvements in this area but, equally, as I said earlier, we were as a management board, with MOPAC’s support, wanting to invest more into our overall digital environment this year and that is currently on pause because of the financial position we find ourselves in.

Siân Berry AM: In terms of equipment for officers, when we get more funding for officers, is that going to cover all the equipment needed for the officers or does the increase in officers represent additional pressure on the capital budget from a spend point of view?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): The year one element, the money we got this financial year for new officers, came with additional funding to enable us to appoint new police staff and for kit, equipment and suchlike. It was not specific. It was not hypothecated in that way. There was not a list that said, “We assume that this money is going to be spent on A, B and C”. However, the Government was clear that the money for officers was going to come with additional money and that happened in this financial year.

What we do not know is the extent to which that money will be carried forward in the next financial year and we do not know the amount of money for other things like radios, body-worn video and tablets, plus the safety equipment, that will come with the future officers. That is all to play for and that is what we are lobbying hard for in the Spending Review.

Siân Berry AM: OK. You mentioned before that there is a risk to training if we do not get full costs covered. Is that, again, to be decided? The equipment needs training, too.

Robin Wilkinson (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): I would not want you to take it that way. It was an example. I talked about how there are potential services provided to the public, but we also spend money on services to enable us to be productive, professional and highly competent, which

Page 36 includes training and includes support for our staff in terms of their development process and suchlike. We will have tough choices to make. That is all I was trying to say.

Siân Berry AM: Then, in terms of capital income, things like the estates programme where you are essentially leasing out or selling properties, are there delays to that happening that you would be able to tell us about?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Sophie [Linden] mentioned earlier that our current medium-term published budget includes significant savings and within those is an assumption that our estate will be much smaller and that we will have exited 100 extra buildings and - a number of those are freehold - we will have achieved the sale of them. We have a number of buildings that we are confident we will not need for the future despite the organisation getting bigger with more police officers. We are working with MOPAC colleagues and with Sophie to ensure that we can exit those buildings and progress to market this year in order to protect our capital receipts. That does not look as though that is being affected by COVID. We are progressing with that.

As we look more widely, though, we are looking at the extent to which we can protect the savings from having fewer buildings despite having a bigger workforce by challenging ourselves about how we occupy buildings and whether or not we can work in a way that means that our buildings can be utilised more effectively in the long term, including whether we can accommodate a greater degree of blended working with people working more from home as well as in the office in order to protect the savings from the estates. We have not made final decisions on that yet. We are actively exploring it.

Again, the outcome of the Spending Review will help determine the extent to which we need to drive hard on those savings or can have a greater level of time to establish what the right long-term position is post-COVID.

Siân Berry AM: Excellent. Then it looks like the Transformation Programme has underspent. Some of the things you have just described are part of that. Is there anything else within that that is significant and that has suffered delays in planning or execution due to coronavirus?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): We have tried very hard and have been quite innovative to enable us to progress and move forward. Even though we have had some of our technical teams having to work from home, particularly in developing the Connect process and looking at how we manage data migration, we have been able to find innovative ways and safe ways of that being done remotely.

Our plans are, broadly speaking, tracking to time and are not majorly affected by COVID. As I said, just to repeat the previous answer, there have been some changes to the sequencing of our estates plans and some readjustments of the quarter in which some big invoices are due in respect of Connect, command-and-control and suchlike, but it does not signal a major shift of approach.

Siân Berry AM: OK. Thank you.

Unmesh Desai AM: I have two points, if I may, Chairman, on the estates strategy.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes, of course.

Unmesh Desai AM: Maybe this is to you, Deputy Mayor or Robin. I will leave it to you to decide who is going to answer.

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I can only go by what I see out there and it just drives me mad seeing all these empty police stations around. I know things take time to plan and we are talking about capital assets. I come from the old school and I do not really like to sell public assets off.

What I really want to ask is two questions. Earlier, Assembly Member Devenish talked about blue-light collaboration and you mentioned something called the Group Collaboration Board. Is that supposed to work across the GLA family with TfL and other people to maximise the impact of your various property disposal strategies or asset maximisation?

Secondly, have you considered alternatives to selling, like leasing or working with housing associations? The police stations in east London that I see - East Ham, North Woolwich - have been lying empty for years now. Islington was recently used to house rough sleepers, or I may be wrong, but there are other uses, especially in a difficult market as a result of COVID. Are you actively looking at ways of turning these empty buildings instead of selling them off and looking at other short-term uses?

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Finance Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): Do you mind if I answer this one? As you said, the Deputy Mayor referred to the GLA Group Collaboration Board. One of the workstreams within that Group Collaboration Board is an estates stream and Robin [Wilkinson] is the chair of that workstream.

One of the things particularly around the policing sites is they are quite small sites and so they are not vast swathes of land. Quite often they are small sites. Therefore, in terms of development and different uses, the options are limited. Quite often they are kitted out in a specific way because they were originally for the MPS.

I do not know if you want to come in, Robin, to supplement what I am saying, but certainly in the GLA estates workstream, when we are looking at disposal decisions, we will absolutely look in the round at whether or not there is any other usage but, generally speaking, the MPS’s particular sites are usually quite small and, therefore, the scope for different usage or group collaboration is very limited. I do not know, Robin, if you want to supplement that?

Robin Wilkinson OBE (Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Police Service): Thanks, Jo. There is good collaboration between the estates team in the MPS led by Vince Fihosy and GLA colleagues, reinforced by the work of the Group Collaboration Board over the last six months, particularly focused on the broader administrative estate, if you can see what I mean, not the more bespoke police station accommodation we have. There is significant collaboration and good joint working taking place.

As I said, my advice from the property experts - and there are ongoing conversations across into TfL and GLA as well - is that the best value for money for most of these sites is to sell in the right way, best value for money for the taxpayer, but if there are specific schemes on specific sites we would look at them on a case-by-case basis.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime): Let us also talk about the capital budget in the round. Clearly, at the last Budget and Performance Committee last year [18 December 2019], we talked about the review of the estates strategy and having to pause because of the number of extra officers that were going to come onstream. That is still an issue. We are not in a pause state anymore, but we are growing, and we still have to make sure that the estate can accommodate the new officers and the new staff that will be needed.

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We also have to remember that it is not just around value for money in terms of disposing. I am with you, Unmesh. I would much prefer not to have to sell a building. It is really awful when we lose an asset like that from the public sector. It is a real problem and, clearly, we have lost it forever.

The problem is with our capital budget. To invest in the types of digital technology that both Caroline [Pidgeon MBE AM] and Siân [Berry AM] have been talking about and to invest in the just normal kit - the cars, the buildings - we need a capital budget. The Government was giving us £12 million a year. That has been cut to £3 million a year. That is nothing. Unfortunately, we are put in a position where we have to sell buildings to put money into our capital budget to make sure that the MPS has the infrastructure. When I say “infrastructure”, I am talking about cars, iPads and computers. All the things needed to be a modern police force has to come out of that capital budget. We do not get the funding from the Government. That is why we have to reduce our estate and sell buildings.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): All right. We are coming to an end. Just a couple of things from me.

Can I ask you what the top-line figure is for actually running the VRU? Who can answer that?

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Finance Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): In terms of the core establishment list?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes.

Jo Moore (Interim Chief Finance Officer, Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime): That is £1.1 million in 2020/21.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Lovely. Thank you. Just confirmation again that as a matter of urgency while we are looking at this budget round, we can have the top-line figures for income generation that was around £270 million and the top-line list of what that generation comes from? Excellent. I can see everybody nodding and so thank you very much for that.

Can I thank you most sincerely to our guests, first for coming in as well as being online, for your answers to our questions? Thank you everybody for attending.

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Page 40 Appendix 2

London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee - Tuesday 22 September 2020 Transcript of Item 5 - 2020-21 Budget Review – Police and Fire

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Now we are going to move on to our next session with the London Fire Brigade (LFB). Can I invite our guests who are all attending online to formally join the meeting and turn their mics and cameras on? I look forward to seeing them all or not. All right. We have Andy Roe, the London Fire Commissioner (LFC); Sue Budden, Director of Corporate Services, LFB; and David Gallie, our Executive Director for Resources at the (GLA).

The first question is: how has COVID-19 impacted the LFC’s finances and what are the main financial challenges facing the LFC as a result of events over the last six months?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): It is fair to say in summary that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all public services and the LFB is no different in that sense. We are pleased with our response in terms of how quickly and effectively we responded to the challenges it presented.

In terms of the question of finance, I suppose the key financial issues in relation to COVID are an increased expenditure of around £6.9 million reducing to about £4.9 million after £1.9 million worth of income from the GLA. Much of that related to payments to frontline staff including £1.7 million for the London Ambulance Service (LAS) Ambulance Driver Assist (ADA). We are seeking as far as is possible to recover that money either through grant or via the LAS.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): We have seen how much you have spent on personal protective equipment (PPE). Did you find that you were having to pay exorbitant amounts of money for it or did you have contracts in place?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): We worked within the National Fire [and Rescue] Framework for the procurement of PPE. Whilst we saw inflation in prices, which was really the case for anyone purchasing PPE, the national shared procurement framework, which is run through the Kent Fire and Rescue Service, was very good at achieving the best outcome it could in the face of that competitive market. I am satisfied that we did our due diligence and effectively made best use of national procurement frameworks there. We were never in a position where we did not have the PPE we needed either in reserves or immediately available throughout the period.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): That is good news. OK. I am now going to move on to my colleague Caroline Pidgeon, if you would like to ask the next question?

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Yes, thank you very much. I would like to ask but I am not sure whether it is the Commissioner or the Director of Corporate Services. I will start with the Commissioner, perhaps.

What has been specifically the impact of your inability to purchase equipment budgeted for in the year 2019/20?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): I am really sorry but what do you mean by that specifically? I am not sure what you are referring to as a context there.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: There has been some equipment - £900,000 on hardware and software - that due to the number of orders of equipment and services could not be delivered due to COVID.

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Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): That is a small point. It has not had a significant impact on our ability to deliver either transformation or particular areas of policy change because some of those areas were predicated on training that then had to slow down because of the social distancing measures in the first part of this. Where we are at now is that we are picking up both on procurement and in fact on wider training activity regardless of really what might happen in the second wave. We have learned lessons from the first wave to enable us to continue a more normal resumption of service in the balance of risk and benefit moving forward.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK. Are you planning to reinstate the orders that you had planned to make on information technology (IT) equipment, which were cancelled due to COVID? Is that still going to go ahead?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): I do not have that level of detail in front of me, but I will be happy to write to the Committee with a specific answer on that.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK. Does Sue know?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Yes, I can come in on that. The key bit of slippage for the current year has been audio and visual equipment on the stations and that was slowed down because contractors were not able to come out and access the stations. We are committed to seeing these things through and so we would see it as slippage rather than something we would not deliver.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK. That will be spent. Are there any aspects of the IT equipment and other things that you were planning to spend on that you have now decided you do not require? Are you aware, Sue?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Perhaps Sue could answer that because that is not, I am afraid, the level of detail in terms of priorities within the Transformation [Delivery] Plan that I am aware of.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): As I said, where there might have been delays because a contractor has either not been able to supply something or not been able to access an order to fit it out, we would expect to see that through. We have not changed what we are aspiring to.

We have spent additional income on IT because we moved, as everybody did, at pace with 24 hours’ notice all office-based staff to homeworking. A lot of the investment has been on remote access licences and laptops so that people can work effectively at home because it has continued for quite a period of time. That is where the investment has come and that might be where we might look into the future if we want to learn some lessons about different ways of working. We might change our investment around office-based staff because we had been very much an organisation that came to work. Internationally people are revisiting that assumption now.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: OK. In terms of recruitment, what are you doing to tackle the issues in recruiting particular officers such as fire safety inspecting officers?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): I will answer that if that is OK. We have a plan in place to recruit sector-competent inspecting officers. It is a challenge, to be honest, though, because there is great competition across the country because of the post-Grenfell [Tower fire] operating landscape. They are in great demand from the private sector, where they can command much higher rates of pay.

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We have been the most successful brigade in the country in recruiting both numbers and quality of inspecting officers. We have our own finishing school now as well. Our approach being taken in terms of strategy is to encourage people from all parts of the country to apply and to see London as the start of their fire safety inspecting career because of the complexity and the learning they get from it. We are thinking very carefully about how we invest in their training and development to retain them.

The answer is that we have a very comprehensive plan to meet it and we are seeing success in comparison to almost every other fire and rescue service in the country, but it is a highly competitive job hire environment and so we are always going to be chasing that. To a degree, it is the retention rather than the ability to bring people on board. What perhaps the figures do not show is that movement of people in and then out, I guess.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Thank you for that. We heard earlier when we were talking to the police that they had seen fewer officers who might have retired, as it were, from the force taking that option up in this COVID period. They were doing a detailed survey of officers to find out more about future plans and why they perhaps had not taken that option.

I am wondering whether you could advise what is happening in terms of that in the fire service. I know I had asked a mayoral question before and I understand that you had higher vacancy rates because there were more retirements, which seems to be the opposite to what we are hearing of in the police. I am wondering if you could perhaps give some context there and some information, please.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): In the broadest sense, we have been very successful in recruiting to a full establishment and, if you look at it, we have done very well in terms of increasing diversity across the past year and a half to two years. In terms of baseline firefighter establishment, we are in a better place than we have been for many years.

The point to make is that both comparative bodies like the LAS and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have a very different rate of retirement than the fire service. Our retention rates are some of the highest in the public sector.

From my point of view, it is not a real strategic issue. We are going to see some change potentially because of the pension remedy situation we find ourselves in for a certain section of the workforce and so we are awaiting the output of the [The Lord Chancellor and others v] McCloud [and Mostyn and others] and Sargeant [v London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and others] judgments and how that gets remedied around the pensions. That may well bring some people’s retirements forward regardless of COVID, but there is no real way of predicting that until we see what the remedy looks like from further hearings later in the year specific to the firefighter pension. That is not really an issue for us in terms of retirement or a slowing down of retirement. That, again, would not be one of my main strategic concerns within the recruitment landscape.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: You are not seeing more retirements, as I had seen before and asked mayoral questions about?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): We are not particularly. With the greatest respect, what we saw even in those numbers was not hugely statistically significant. Again, it is worth noting that we never have an issue recruiting. We will routinely get something close to 10,000 applicants for 400 jobs. It is one of the most competitive job environments in terms of being able to get a position in the public sector. We never have a shortage of applicants and we never really have a genuine retention problem.

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What has been our problem perhaps in the past is the way we recruited in big blocks rather than steadily over a period of time with smaller recruitment rounds and, I am afraid, not paying enough attention to the people we were recruiting to best serve London’s communities. That is what we have really focused on in terms of the recruitment journey.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Lovely. Thank you very much.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. Before I come to the next question, can I ask you? This is a real concern, the fire safety inspection officers, and I absolutely understand why we have that issue. Did I hear correctly, Andy, that you are training these fire safety officers in-house?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): We have a very comprehensive training programme. Where we can take people with previous experience, we will. Because of the nature of the London operating environment and - as you will all know on this Committee - with the passing of recent legislation around the fire safety order and the coming legislation around the building safety order, we have to be really sure that people understand how to operate within the nuance of the London operating landscape. We have 8,005 of the country’s 12,000 residential high-rises. We have the most complex cladding environment, as it were, in the country and probably in Europe. Yes, we think it is really important that we have our own internal school to take the base-level qualifications provided by a contracted provider and then bring them to life through our own mentoring and finishing school process.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I thoroughly approve of that and I am sure everybody else would because they are vital to us and so we must keep them. Referring to keeping them, if we are spending fortunes training them up to do that and it is right that we do, are we putting anything within their contracts to say that they then have to stay with us for a period of time in order that we get some of that funding that we have clearly put into their training back again and can ensure at least we have them in situ for a while?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): That is a good question that deserves a detailed answer. I cannot give you one right at this point in terms of contractual deals, but we can certainly provide that detail back to the Committee. Retention is a real issue and I have certainly had some questions about that. I do not have that to hand unless, Sue, you have something greater in the detail, but I am not sure you would have.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): I do not have detail about retention. We are certainly using the link grades to encourage people to stay so that they can feel there is some progression. As to the stick part of it, it would be quite usual in the public sector, certainly in my journey to here, that as you train to be an accountant, if you leave within a certain period of time, you have to pay back what it cost to do that. I would have to check whether we have applied that here.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. I really sincerely hope that is in place and, if it is not, we should be looking at that. If the Brigade is spending an absolute fortune, quite rightfully, training our staff, we need to make sure we can retain them.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): I am not sure that we do not have that. It may well be we do. It is just that I would be pretending if I held that level of detail at this point.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Fair enough. I understand. I would be very grateful if you could get back to the Committee as soon as possible on that and give us that comfort. We are going on to another question now from Assembly Member Sahota.

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Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Commissioner, good afternoon. My question is regarding the property transformation. What progress has been made on the property transformation project since the last meeting of the Committee in December 2019?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Sue, if I could turn to you to answer in the detail, please, because that lies within your directorate?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Yes, certainly. I am very happy to do that. It has been quite a process to get to where we now are. The original property service review, a number of years ago now, was to move to an integrated contract, which is a model that the MPS used. That proved unsuccessful for us over a number of fronts, largely because our operating environment is so different compared to police stations. It just did not work that well.

We did a review last year and, as a result of that, through a mutual agreement with that provider, we are looking to insource the spend that we gave them and mobilise a new structure that allows much more focus on delivery.

If you were to get to the capital programme, you will have seen in previous years we have had a struggle to spend money on estates projects and have lacked professionalism in the head of that department. We have a new head of service in since Christmas [2019]. She has put a new structure in place. We are putting in a new computer-aided facilities management system and a new helpdesk. We are looking at new facilities management contracts. We are refocusing the team so they have set key performance indicators (KPIs) and delivery. We are putting in a whole range of audits so that we can ensure we are compliant.

One of the things we are doing as well is making sure we have people out there visiting stations to get a genuine idea of what it is like. The issues we had were not just about working with the supplier but, given the way that staff use fire stations, it has an impact on their ability to respond effectively if the station is in a poor state. We have moved at pace to put this change in and we are mobilising the change now.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Sue, will this property transformation project contribute towards any of your savings, please?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): For the moment, we are looking to reinvest the money and so we are not increasing the spend. We are looking to reinvest what we were spending on putting the right structures in place. It would be the imperative going forward that we become more efficient in the way in which we deliver projects and in the way which we use property consultants. As a result of that, spend will reduce over time.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: I presume that you are getting more efficiency for the same money and investment. It is cost neutral but more efficient.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Exactly that, yes, cost neutral, more efficient and also much more effective. It was important for us that we got value for what we were spending.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Good. Thank you very much, Sue.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. Thank you. I suspect this would be for Andy. Can you tell me what progress, in your view, has been made with blue-light collaboration over the last year or so?

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Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): COVID has been really interesting in terms of accelerating progress in some areas and showing some real opportunities. The support we provided to the LAS, for example, is something that we would aspire certainly to carry on through the COVID period and would welcome discussion on moving beyond that. We have had 450 firefighters providing surge support into the LAS by driving ambulances and responding to emergency calls. It improves their understanding of the communities they are serving and their skills. We are trusted partners who the LAS love working with. It has been a really positive experience and shows the power of collaboration when we really have to. We will be looking to build on that as one of the really positive lessons learned.

Again, our ability to support the Coroner with colleagues from the MPS in providing dignity to those who tragically had died in their homes as a result of COVID was a real example of how the fire service can step outside its traditional role very quickly when it needs to because they are resilient, well-trained people, used to working in teams, used to dealing with traumatic and difficult situations. We were even moving PPE. Our logistics structure has moved over 10 million items of PPC for local authorities during COVID.

The answer is that in the period of COVID we have shown just (a) how important collaboration is and (b) how good we are at it. Those are conversations that are happening at the chief level now in London as a result of those positive experiences and we will be thinking about how we best build on them. Does that answer your question in some way?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): You are talking to the converted with me. Blue-light collaboration is absolutely vital, but I have thought that for the last five years. If we talk to any of the blue-light services on their own, everybody tells us how wonderful it is and how well things are going, Andy - it is not just you - but we never seem to be getting anywhere. When we look at the London estate, if you like, with various buildings lying empty, we really do need to get a movement on that. Perhaps you can talk to the other chiefs and say that we are all very eager to see it happening. That is all I can say. It will be brought up at every given opportunity.

Dr Alison Moore AM: Chairman, if I might, I just want to clarify. There was some extensive work done particularly with the LAS and I had the opportunity to hear about it on the ground when I visited local fire stations. The question I just wanted to clarify and make sure I understood the answer to was on the costs for that collaborative work because it has a budgetary implication and that there was some transfer back and that the costs of that were covered to the LFB.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I was talking more generally.

Dr Alison Moore AM: Yes, I appreciate that, but in budget terms.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Can you clarify that? The last time we spoke, Andy --

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Yes, the costs of the extension of the ADA support is to be reimbursed by the LAS. We are really clear about that. The LAS is really clear about that. We are just doing the detail of that now in discussion in terms of what that return looks like, but it is in the millions. There is a very clear route back for that money, which we are progressing as we speak. I would expect that as well because we have a core statutory role, which our budget is intended to support, and therefore I would expect reimbursement in that regard.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes, that is good to hear, but in the meantime, going back to the actual blue- light collaboration, we would all be very happy to see something happening sooner rather than later on that.

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Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Perhaps to reassure you, we are talking about all matters of collaboration including property, particularly because we have had ambulances in fire stations much more frequently during this period. I respect the question and there are definite areas of exploration that we should be undertaking, particularly in the context of the financial pressures facing all of us and having a larger stake like we have.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I completely agree. It is brilliant. We are completely agreed on that, but we really do need to get a move on doing something because from a scrutiny point of view it looks like it has been talked about for years and nothing is happening. If any of us can assist with that, do let us know, but I am sure we all approve of saving money in that way.

If I could come to overspend, Andy, why has the LFC still not devised an effective strategy to reduce overtime spend?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Perhaps I could talk about it in the bigger context here. We have a revenue overspend of £10.1 million against the 2020/21 budget of £43.9 million. This is due really in many ways to COVID. We are looking at £4.9 million directly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic across a series of costs with £6.8 million offset, which is £6.8 million of costs offset by £1.9 million of GLA funding. Separately, we have operational staff overtime of £4 million. Having unpicked that, that is also related to COVID. Significant elements relate back to the staff on the ADA, which is what we are seeking to reimburse.

In terms of mitigation, we have already talked about the cost of the extension of the ambulance support to be reimbursed by the LAS. We have £1.8 million in funding from the GLA assumed in the forecast. I personally have commissioned an extensive review of overtime, which has started and revealed that a lot of it was down to ADA and some other pressures around specialist skills and officers. I have told my officers that I would expect that not to be repeated moving forward. It is not a sustainable position.

The insurance retendering in the post-COVID environment resulted in £900,000 following the annual renewal term, but we significantly reduced that from £2 million by going back to the insurers and negotiating hard and lobbying the Government and colleagues across the parliamentary landscape continuously around this. We have received significant additional grant income from central Government, including £5.5 million for fire safety protection and £1.3 million for Grenfell actions, some of which will be used to offset existing costs.

I will put in place a recruitment challenge process for fire rescue staff (FRS) posts, which is specifically hard- edged. We will need directorial approval for any new hire. You have just heard from Sue [Budden] around property. We are reducing controllable budgets wherever possible, for example on building maintenance and the non-health and safety issues. Where possible, we will bring in early implementation of saving proposals for 2020/21 where we can.

We have a clear and detailed plan to meet that overspend. Does that give you some of the answer you needed, Susan?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes. Briefly, what is the anticipated cost of overtime in 2020/21?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): I am not sure that we can give you that at this point. That is part of the review that is occurring. I suppose what I can tell you is my challenge: it simply cannot be at those levels and, therefore, we have to seek to drive that down.

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Again, being straightforward with this Committee, in the past that size of overtime bill has been hidden in under-establishment. What it revealed was both the cost of supporting the LAS as we did and also some of the challenges of ensuring a very complex mixture of skills and officer positions. By becoming fully established at base level, pretty much, it exposes a problem that has been there for years. I suppose the assurance I give this Committee is that this is very clearly in my sights and I am afraid poor Sue as my Director of Corporate Services and Finance is tasked with bringing that down significantly.

I do not suppose there is anything you would like to add, is there, Sue, at all about this?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): I suppose just to add, the forecast shows a projected £4 million overspend on overtime and we have taken our usual prudent approach in getting to that. We took the spend to date as at the end of June and assumed that that would continue because we did not have a lot of detailed information as to its cause. You might have seen that in some of the reporting that to date we had scored only about £100,000 directly to COVID because that was where it was appearing on the system but, as Andy says, we have done a lot more work now to understand what is driving that overtime. A lot of it is prearranged overtime (PAO) to backfill for the ADA shifts.

I am hoping that we will be able to bring that forecast down when we understand it in more detail. There has also been a bit of a lag in claims and so it is just trying to pull that whole picture together. The £4 million is that at the end of June and we are starting to work through the end-of-September figures now. I am expecting to have a much greater understanding and to be able to improve that forecast.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): That is good because I did look at those figures and it did look like £3 million of it had nothing to do with COVID. That is why I was particularly concerned, but if you are telling me something different, I accept that. We will come back to it in the next round of budget analysis. Thank you.

Regarding pay awards, can you tell me what the medium- to long-term approach to pay awards is, given the context of an increasingly constrained budget for everyone?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Sue, would you mind answering that? You really do have a handle on that area.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Yes, of course. We are discussing this as part of our budget process of course, which is the right thing to do, but the budget ordinarily assumes 2% increases across the board. You will know that the firefighter pay is not in our gift. It is subject to national negotiation through the National Joint Council (NJC) [for Local Authority Fire and Rescue Services] and wherever that ends up then puts pressure on our FRS staff negotiations because there is an expectation of parity. We probably need to do a bit of modelling with the NJC about where they think this could be going for next year, because pay awards for this year are in the process of being settled, and take that all into account in our budget process, also in consultation with the GLA.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes, I know it is not easy, but thank you for those answers. We are going on to a different section now. I am afraid you are still going to have to put up with me for a while here.

What are the biggest challenges - and you have mentioned some of the things but if there is anything different - facing the LFC in achieving the £3 million a year savings target that it set itself for 2020/21?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Perhaps I should answer this at the highest level. The challenge for the LFB is that, as this Committee will know, we found ourselves in a place in January of this year where

Page 48 we, quite rightly, faced highly critical external scrutiny. We have been tasked with bringing forward recommendations for improvement both from phase one of the Grenfell inquiry and also a highly critical report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS). Those reports really demand real transformation and the reality is that transformation costs.

The highest-level challenge is how to bring forward this transformation whilst maintaining the service that London and Londoners deserve in respect to the six- and eight-minute attendance times, which are gold standards that we should hold to, and recognising that the environment we serve is broadening. Where we once had 800,000 buildings within the regulatory reform order to service in respective fire safety, we may now face millions under the new legislation and rightly so. In fact, the built environment itself, particularly while remediation has not happened to the extent we would like, is a very difficult operating environment where no single stakeholder is really cognitive to the full extent of the risk within that environment. We are absolutely front and centre in servicing that risk.

The high-level challenge is how we bring forward the change that London and Londoners deserve and need whilst at the same time maintaining admirably held standards around baseline response and do so in an ever widening and complex risk environment. That is the challenge that I see at the highest level.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Have you had any discussions with the Mayor about the budget before he produces the budget guidance?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Absolutely. All credit to the Mayor. I would recognise that in the way that he has protected us in the context of many of the other GLA bodies. Proportionally we have taken the least hit. I recognise it in the fact that we have seen an additional sum of money to the tune of £5 million from the GLA in terms of helping us close our in-year gap. To be fair, there is a recognition in central Government as well that we are operating in a very difficult landscape. Across the political spectrum, there has been a desire to try to help us in whatever way we can. That is manifest in some of the central Government grants we have seen as well. People recognise it, but there is a macroeconomic context which is extremely difficult for the country.

I suppose the reassurance to this Committee is that everyone understands how difficult it is for us and we are working effectively to engage with stakeholders from the Mayor to the Minister, really, to see how we can best provide a service to London and Londoners in that environment.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): It is a concern, really, though, that you are making £7 million of the £10 million of additional savings that the Mayor has asked you to find by using one reserve or another. Ultimately, using reserves, I would not say that is something you could sustain, is it? What are your comments on that?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Yes, it is difficult to sustain that level of use of reserves, but in that context, we are no different from all the other public-sector bodies. This is a big macroeconomic question that as public servants we have to face, and I am afraid politicians across the broad spectrum of the political environment will have to help us face.

There is a more fundamental question about what sort of public services we want. Do we recognise that we are getting to the point - certainly with the LFB and I am sure it is no different for colleagues in the MPS - that we are close to the margins of what we can achieve as cashable savings, particularly in a place where greater productivity, rightly, is demanded of us?

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Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I get that, but we are just looking at the finances at this point. Using an incredible amount of money that you need to find by using up reserves is a concern for us going forward and is something we will have to look at going forward, Andy.

All right. We come on to key financial issues and you have me again here now. We will go on to reserves now. Is the LFC’s proposed approach to use the reserves to plug the 2020/21 budget gap sustainable and realistic?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): The answer to that is that for beyond 2020/21, we are in, as you might imagine, discussion with colleagues in City Hall around what we might do moving forward. It would be unhelpful at this point and probably irresponsible to speculate on where that might lead us because that is a process that is unfolding now. There is a complex mix of things ranging from the lobbying of central Government to looking at all possible options on the table. I need to honour that process and how it runs, I guess.

The answer is that the use of the reserves is just one part of what might be a solution to a more difficult problem moving forward. Sue, would you want to add anything to that, really?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): I suppose the use of reserves and the creation of the budget flexibility reserves to smooth the impact of funding has been a deliberate strategy. The use of reserves in the current year to address the additional funding requirement is new and, again, we have taken quite a prudent approach to that because we have already found about £900,000 of the £3 million in savings that we have set ourselves. We expect to find more through the various things that Andy has already mentioned. There is additional money that the Home Office has set aside for fire for the COVID response. The deadline for claims against that is the end of September and so it could be that we get money through there. Then there is also the discussion with the LAS. All of those things combined could reduce the draw on reserves in the current year.

One of the broader context points links to pensions funding. We have this ongoing uncertainty about the £22 million that the Government is allocating for the outcome of the 2016 actuarial review of the Firefighters Pension Scheme. The Government has always said that it will sort that in the next Spending Review and so our budget flexibility reserve has been held there pending this sorting out. This is a difficult one to call. We have always been really prudent about this and assumed it will not continue and then in each year it has continued. We are looking at that now in terms of our projections because the fact that we have already built in reductions in funding may indicate that the pensions grant itself might be continued. We had assumed, even if they continued the pensions grant, they would reduce other grants and so it would net off. We are looking at that overall picture. The pensions money is quite a key factor in where we are headed, and we should know that as part of this Spending Review this time.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you. You have virtually answered a question that is coming later and so thank you for that.

We understand that with all these uncertainties it is very difficult to budget, but nevertheless using reserves is not where anybody wants to be if you are dealing with finances.

We are now going to go on to a question from Assembly Member Sahota regarding Grenfell.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Commissioner, as the Chairman says, these questions are related to the Grenfell- related activity. I know that Grenfell has become a significant part of your work programme both financially and operationally, but you have overspent on the Grenfell-related activity. Why is that the case?

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Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): OK. What I will say about that is that it is very difficult to separate our Grenfell-related activity from general transformation in some ways. We have had £1.3 million in anyway from the Home Office. I would view some of the money that came in for protection, the £5.5 million from the Home Office, directly related to Grenfell. It may be perhaps the way we have expressed ourselves, but the reality is the sort of change that is demanded as a result of the outcomes of that fire, both in the regulatory environment and in what is becoming an emergingly complex operational environment.

I am prepared to say that organisationally we did not know the true costs of that to begin with and those will emerge over time as well. That is one of the higher-level challenges I was talking about. If we want to really satisfy the rightful concerns of those communities, then we are going to have to spend on training, on leadership, on equipment and on potentially how we use our frontline firefighters in the regulatory environment. That costs and that is emerging as well.

I suppose that is the high-level answer. Is there anything you can answer further on the specifics, Sue?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): I can assist if that would be helpful.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): It might be, just to give a greater level of granularity.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): If this is a reference to the reporting in the end-of-June financial position report, it is very much related to spend linked to the investigation and the inquiry, which is underwritten to a large extent by insurance. Whilst we are showing an overspend on a range of elements of that, we are also showing income from insurers. We cannot be sure the insurers will cover everything that we do, but we are in constant dialogue with them. The overspend you can see on that line is offset by that additional income.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Yes. In the meeting in December 2019, the Deputy Commissioner did say that they are working on ways to assess the impact of Grenfell on the LBC. Is that work being done to find out what the impact has been on the LFB budget as a result of the Grenfell activities?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Yes. It is continuous. It is embodied in the Transformation Delivery Plan. I need to be clear with this Committee that that Transformation Delivery Plan is simply a start. We are talking about fundamental change in an institution that is over 150 years old and we are talking about fundamental change as a result of very serious exposure of systemic issues that required improvement.

It would be naïve of me to present to this Committee saying that we have all the answers at this point. Things are continuing to emerge; what you see in the built environment, for example, with the scale of the risk that is now embodied there. What is being exposed in phase two of the inquiry is, frankly, shocking in terms of the levels of incompetency and negligence. If you extrapolate that across not only high rises but the rest of the built environment, the cost of servicing that with the FRS is as yet unknown. Depending on how the legislation lands, which is still moving through Parliament, the cost of that is as yet unknown.

If we talk about some of the more difficult aspects of operational change, for example, we have brought forward high-rise policies, which we are the first brigade in the country to do because it is difficult. It exposes firefighters to a degree of risk that we think is justifiable but is still higher than perhaps it has been in the past. Should we find a better technological solution than those policies currently state, then we would inevitably, under my duties under the Health and Safety at Work Act, move towards securing that technology in respect

Page 51 to the replacement of breathing apparatus. Indeed, there are trials ongoing where we are pushing the industry to provide us with better answers. That, again, will cost in a way that we do not know.

I could give you a simple answer, but I would rather give you the truthful answer, which is that this is an ongoing process inextricably linked to the wider journey of transformation. What we will do is we will be transparent with those costs as they emerge and that, again, will mean serious conversations with all relevant stakeholders, whether colleagues in the GLA or whether colleagues in central Government.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Commissioner, that was my next question. What discussions have you had with the Government about the impact of the extra costs to the LFB as a result of the Grenfell-related activities?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Continuous. I speak to the most senior level of the Home Office on an almost weekly basis. I speak to the Minister directly at least twice a month. To be fair, I have found them to be supportive and understanding, despite the difficulties with the macroeconomic environment.

I suppose the point I would make is that everyone recognises that Grenfell was the single largest loss of life in one incident, outside of the pandemic, since the Second World War. To politicians’ credit, across the political spectrum there has been, in my opinion, a general desire to get things sorted and so those conversations are entertained. We have talked specifically on the matter of needing greater money for protection and that certainly is embodied in the size of the grant for London. We spoke directly to the need to meet some of the direct Grenfell costs. Again, that should be recognised - and credit to the civil servants involved - in a direct grant to London and other fire rescue services around the costs of Grenfell. Those conversations are ongoing. The Minister, for example, on Monday is holding a summit on progress against the Grenfell recommendations, which includes a discussion around the cost of doing this with all the relevant national stakeholders.

The Mayor frequently questions me - and rightly so - as to the costs and how we might bring change in regard to Grenfell and is extremely supportive in trying to find any avenue for funding that might support us in that.

Generally, the conversations are positive. They are frequent. People are alive to the complexity. However, as with any other public-sector body, we are working within that very difficult macroeconomic environment.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Thank you for that, Commissioner. Of course, it is reassuring for the Committee to know that you have these discussions frequently and that they are constructive.

One last thing. What impact is unsafe cladding having on the LFB’s workload and budget and what would help you to deliver your objectives more efficiently?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Are we talking about planning in the built environment, presumably?

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Yes.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): I cannot tell you necessarily the end point of that impact because this is, if I am frank, a national scandal for emerging on a scale. If it were not for the focus of the media on COVID-19 and perhaps Brexit, this might be a bigger story in some ways because we do not know the full limit of what has happened inside the built environment over the past 10 to 15 years, on the basis of what we guess professionally, but certainly are beginning to hear inside phase two of the inquiry.

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The real answer to this is that the way that this will be fixed for me is when we stop building buildings that are unsafe, we competently inspect them and we remediate those that require remediation, but I am afraid that is very challenging and will take a number of years. Until then, we are in a very difficult operative environment that is more complex and more risk-laden and where the dangers are sometimes hidden from view. What is incumbent on all major stakeholders, including us, is to be absolutely rigorous in holding ourselves to account and in holding other major stakeholders to account, whether that is local authorities, whether it is major developers, whether it is politicians, whether it is us as fire and rescue services, and to do everything we can to drive forward pressure to ensure remediation and to ensure that the legislation that is currently being passed through Parliament is fit for purpose and wide enough in scope not to need continuously returning to, as we have seen with examples of past legislation.

The assurance I will give this Committee is that we have a dedicated build team. We are now leading with an extremely experienced London Assistant Commissioner, Dan Daly, a national fire safety hub. We have people embedded in the Home Office to provide that support because we hold the majority of the risk in London.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Commissioner, thank you very much. We are all very concerned about the progress or the slow progress being made in rectifying this matter but thank you very much for the concerns you expressed and for stating that this is a national scandal. Thank you.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Before I come on to Assembly Member Duvall, very quickly, we have a figure that Grenfell legal costs have contributed to over £2 million or 20% of your total overspend.

Can you explain how the investigation drives up these costs and what happens to make them higher than expected? Also, in order to keep these in check, do you have the option of making use of the legal resources of other GLA bodies, as an example? Could I ask you to be brief on that, Andy?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): I will be brief. It is the inevitable end result of being involved in the largest criminal investigation the MPS has ever run and probably one of the most complex public inquiries ever seen in this country because of the range of detail involved, the complex mass of legislation involved, the need to draw on different legal specialists within that and the fact that there are so many different bereaved, survivors and residents because of the scale of the loss of life and property. It is an inevitable fact.

Do I think it is easy to draw on other bodies? No, I do not, because this is a very specific set of legislative demands that is best serviced by a dedicated legal team that really understands the operating environment. It is complex, it is wide-ranging, and it needs to be extremely well informed.

Does that give you what you need, or would you like perhaps some more details? Sue holds that area within her directorate.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. £2 million is a lot and so it needs to be looked at. I will move now on to Assembly Member Duvall.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): Very quickly, Andy, you described the transformation process rather eloquently, I thought, and where the service finds itself. Can you tell us in percentage terms, despite the challenges of COVID, despite the budget issues, what progress has been made in terms of your plan in dealing with that transformation? What is the percentage achieved to date?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Hello, Len. I have never had it expressed as a percentage and so you have genuinely caught me out there a bit. We can get you that. It is probably useful to express it in that

Page 53 way. What I would say is we can provide you with the figures in terms of how many of the actions that are detailed on that plan have been completed or are on their way to completion and we can provide the Committee with that detailed update. That is the best way to answer it. You will be able to read it in the fullness of that detail.

What I would say is that whilst there have been some aspects of the plan that have been delayed inevitably because of COVID - for example, group training, some of the more difficult aspects around getting people together to do high-rise training - we are remedying that by learning the lessons from the first part of COVID and then expanding that training back out.

I suppose in broad summation where do I think we are at? We have a good plan that we are ticking particular items off against and there is defined progress against many of those, whether it is bringing forward policies in respect to high-rise, whether it is getting our fleet of new aerials on the run, whether it is ensuring that there are smoke hoods on every machine, whether it is starting up large-scale training that is going to support the first brigade to have a mass-evacuation policy in respect to high-rise in the country. We are moving across all those things. We have a defined leadership programme now that is being delivered. We are looking at some of the issues raised out of the inquiry report and are now manifesting real change, for example, around command units. The controlled implementation plan is well ahead in terms of progress. What I would say to you is that we are making good progress against that plan but that plan is ever evolving because, as we get into the detail of it, what is becoming clearer is the breadth and depth of what transformation really means, particularly as regards culture for the LFB.

I need to be truthful in saying that whilst that plan is good and whilst we now have many of the people in place at senior level who will help us deliver it, we need to make it real for our frontline staff. We have a great task ahead of us to engage with them and enable them to really build the details of the plan to make it sustainable. That is really where our next focus is: on this great challenge of internal communication and of turning the oil tanker as regards culture, self-belief, confidence and professionalism. I cannot give you a percentage, but I can certainly give you my summary view of where we are.

Len Duvall AM (Deputy Chair): Thank you.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK. My next two questions on overtime and pensions have been answered and so we will go straight to Assembly Member Berry for income.

Siân Berry AM: Thank you. Is there anything you can add about what is happening with your income shortfalls at the moment and what are you doing to expand income generation? Some of the things you have said about the amount of work you have to do on buildings, one would expect you to be charging business owners for that, for example. Are you working on ways of getting more income to cover your additional costs?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): On income generation, I suppose the first thing I will say is that in terms of our activities in the built environment there is very little space to charge for that because we are, in effect, the regulator. We are, in effect, the enforcing agent. You muddy the waters. When we provide advice, whilst we are friendly, we are not really providing friendly advice. We are telling you how you should best provide a safe environment. That advice can very often lead to enforcement and prohibition. You muddy the waters greatly if you seek to generate income on that basis. That is our legal position as well, if that is what you are suggesting. I am not sure where you think there is room for income within that.

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Siân Berry AM: I can see the point, but you pay for your driving test. You pay for other things like your vehicle checks where you are doing critical inspections. I do not see why building owners should not cover your costs at least.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): We are not framed within the legislation that way. That is a completely different thing. We are not inspectors. We audit. The building owner has the responsibility. We will not come up and carry out a fire safety inspection for them and sign them off. That is not what happens. We come and have a look at them and say, “We do not like your inspection. We are not sure that you have covered all the bases there. You might need to go away and think about that”. We will expect them to operate on that basis. We are in a completely different legal position. It is the other way around. The built environment in London with the size of my workforce is why the inspectorate regime changed in 2005. We simply could not service the London environment.

We are not in a position to generate income in that regard. What I would say is that, again, genuinely, we have to be careful about income generation as an enforcing body. It is a bit like the police. Therefore, I would be reluctant, really, to pursue that.

Siân Berry AM: That is a completely fair enough answer, but otherwise there is still going to be a hole in your finances that needs to be filled. Are you thinking about expanding other services that you offer such as training, secondment of staff or indeed things within your property portfolio that you might use to supplement your income?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Yes. We are interested. There is an interest across the GLA in using shared services and there is a duty upon us in the environment we find ourselves in to look at where we can provide value. We have some excellent internal departments, like Legal, like our Property department, where we might be able to offer value to others. There are some avenues of exploration there and that is taking place within the GLA collaboration workspace that is looking at it in the context of budget, particularly around property.

We have a large estate. Because of our operating model - we are risk-led - there is very little wriggle room in that space. Can we make better use of it across the GLA group for other partners in London? Absolutely. We have a really energised new Head of Property who frankly terrifies me and is out there looking for those opportunities now, because that is exactly the sort of place where we could drive income generation and should be looking. I think you are right to ask that and, yes, we are exploring all avenues of that as part of our forward budget.

Siân Berry AM: OK, thank you very much. In terms of costs, have you done an estimate of the ongoing cost of coronavirus-related additional costs and have you done any assessment of what a second wave might cost you?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): The answer is yes; we are looking at this continuously. We are trying to get more sophisticated, for example, around COVID PPE. We are trying to mitigate costs, learning what we have learnt from phase 1. For example, we want to move to a different model that supports the ambulance service, providing the same level of operational support but with a clear, continuous line of finance to maintain it. We are looking at how we use PPE and the levels of PPE we might need going forward and, therefore, exactly how much we need to hold in reserve against the numbers. We have looked at the cost of cleaning and how we might balance that going forward. We have to plan in the detail. Again, Sue, is there anything you would want to add to that? Your people have done a lot in terms of forecasts around future costs of a second wave.

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Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Yes, certainly. In terms of cleaning, we have cleaning in place now until the end of March [2021]. That is already in our forecasts to have additional cleaning across the estate, additional sanitisation every day and cleaning on days where there previously was none. Similarly, PPE stocks. I am not sure how long it is going to last, but we are holding stocks of PPE and we have got an agreed protocol with Kent around that. We have also done a lot of work around information and communications technology (ICT) so that people can work effectively at home, and most of them have done. Whether they have enjoyed it or not, we have certainly not seen a drop in productivity over the last six months. There is a welfare issue there.

The main issue for us is around staff absences and trying to model what that would look like, how we would cover it off with overtime and the choices we might make around that. That leads directly to the ADA as well and have we got capacity to do that. They are the sorts of things we will be looking at.

Siân Berry AM: In terms of the actual money involved, do you have lower and upper estimates, depending on how bad things are allowed to get?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): We did this when this started back in March [2020]. We modelled up to 30% absences being covered fully by prearranged overtime, but we have not hit anywhere near that. The conversation we had been having earlier about overtime has mainly been around covering for the ADA programme. We may want to see if we can be a bit more subtle about it, because numbers above 30% absence are really large and I would not want to be factoring in things that may not materialise, which may mean we make unhelpful decisions to shut other spend off when we did not need to. We are trying to take all the news that is coming out this week and saying, “What is the most effective model we can put together about what absence might look like for us?” It does tie into testing as well. If we can get staff tested, we can keep them at work.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Thank you, Sue. I was going to make a point about Test and Trace because actually while Sue and colleagues can do all their best work, we are of course not existing in isolation from the pressures on wider society. Actually, Test and Trace would be a good example of even carefully planned figures. We have the lowest attrition rates in the public sector, which I am very proud of, around COVID-19. That is an absolute demonstration of the loyalty of our staff to London and their desire to do the right thing. That could be very adversely affected by what we are beginning to see in the testing environment. I have got some serious concerns about that, which we have raised through the Strategic Coordination Group (SCG) process. It makes predictions really difficult.

Siân Berry AM: This is lack of access to tests, so that you lose the information.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Absolutely, yes, absolutely. I do not have enough of an evidential base at the moment because the problems with testing are a fairly recent phenomenon. I would be surprised,from the anecdotal stuff I am seeing - the closures upon watches - if we do not begin to see an emerging problem and therefore a knock-on to our finances as a result. We would have to then resort to greater numbers of overtime if that testing system is not resolved, never mind some of the issues it raises around providing cover to London. We are subject to some of those external pressures, which can be very quick-moving in terms of the effects they then have on an organisation, and on a scale, potentially.

Siân Berry AM: The problems with Test and Trace are not only not helping to let you estimate the potential impact, but also, they will exacerbate the potential impact on their own?

Page 56

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Absolutely, because what I end up having is people going into self-isolation for 14 days, who could be out of it within two or three days if we were able to test effectively and get people back on the run. That has a profound effect, at a very simple level, on our ability to deliver our services. The issue is less, as I understand it, about capacity in the testing centres but more about your journey to the test centre, how you get there, the system that surrounds that, and then the fact of how laboratories--. Again, just to be clear, we have made representation on that basis back into Government through the SCG and will be doing so directly if we need to.

Siân Berry AM: OK, great. Thank you very much.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): OK, thank you very much. I have a very brief question for Sue Budden, please. Can you tell me what your income generation figure was last year and what it is likely to be this year?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): The forecast for this year is £42 million across all income lines, and obviously a large part of that is the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act, which I think you are aware of.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): I do not have the figure for last year, the outturn, in front of me, but it would be in the region of that. I can check that out and then come back to you.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Could you send the Committee that, please, and can we have a top-line list of where you get that money from?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Yes.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Lovely, thank you very much. Last but not least, it is Assembly Member Devenish on the capital programme.

Tony Devenish AM: Thank you, Chair. I think some of this has been covered by Assembly Member Berry’s questioning, so I will be brief. I was interested in Andy’s comment that he has got a fantastic new Head of Property. Maybe you would like to name check him and tell me a bit about what they are actually doing. My first question is: what progress has been made in pooling resources and working in partnership to source affordable funding for the LFC capital programme?

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): It is a lady called Laura Birnbaum, who came from the Ministry of Justice. Sue, how long has she been in post for?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): About eight months.

Andy Roe (London Fire Commissioner): Yes, so not long in post, but she has in that time pulled forward some very significant reviews of almost every function within Property, along with the structure of the department itself. I think it is incumbent upon Sue, really, who needs to take some credit for what I think has been really good work, to give you the detail of that.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): The main way in which we looked to fund the capital programme - because there is no Government grant for cost of capital anymore - is a

Page 57 combination of raising capital receipts, which has been a very slow process for us. Then it is mainly talking to City Hall through their Treasury function around how we can get access to the cheapest possible borrowing where we need to take projects forward and making sure that is value for money. That is where the conversations lie.

This probably is not funding for the capital programme, but it links into the earlier conversation about collaboration. We are very interested in letting our space where we can. That generates revenue rather than capital, but it is part of the overall picture of getting funding in that you can reinvest in the estate.

Tony Devenish AM: Thank you. On fleet replacement - this is always going to be a major element of your LFB capital budget for the next couple of years - can you provide an update on where we are with this, please, both financially and in terms of timescales? If you prefer, I am perfectly happy for you to write to us in more detail.

I will make my final point and I will let you speak, Sue. When we met last December [2019], you may recall you wanted the LFC to be “more ambitious”, sorry to quote you, in terms of the contribution to the Mayor’s Homes for London programme. Have you been more ambitious and, again, could you give us details now or could you write to us, please?

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): I can obviously follow this up with a bit more detail. On the fleet, that has become a successful replacement programme now, following some initial hiccoughs, working with our providers. We spent quite a significant amount of money last year replacing all the appliances. We have new aerials rolling out and we are making good progress with the fire boats. That relationship with Babcock seems to be going well now and the spend is coming through.

In terms of Homes for Londoners, I think our ambition is there in the small contribution we can make with the sites that we have, but it remains a very slow process. You might be aware of Albert Embankment, our old headquarters. That went through Planning Committee in December [2019] and was approved, but then it has subsequently been called in by the Secretary of State and there is a planning inquiry happening in December [2020]. We are not very quick.

Tony Devenish AM: Thank you. I would love more detail, so perhaps you could write to us. You always quote the Albert Embankment, but I would be very interested to hear what Laura [Birnbaum] and your team are doing on property but also in terms of all the other efficiencies. Perhaps you could write to the Committee and I will leave it there, Chair. Thank you.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Of course.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you very much. Just one brief thing. Sue, could you write to us with a breakdown of that £2 million legal fee, just so we have some idea of where that has gone? We would be very grateful. Thank you.

Sue Budden (Director of Corporate Services, London Fire Brigade): Of course.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Can I thank our guests for attending today and for their answers to our questions, and can I congratulate them on not being in this Chamber? It is freezing. Well done for staying in the warm at home.

Page 58 Agenda Item 4

Subject: Summary List of Actions

Report to: Budget and Performance Committee

Report of: Executive Director of Secretariat Date: 14 October 2020

This report will be considered in public

1. Summary

1.1 This report sets out details of actions arising from previous meetings of the Budget and Performance Committee. The report also sets out details of actions arising from a meeting of the Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee, noting that the Sub-Committee was not re-established by the London Assembly at its Annual Meeting on 15 May 2020.

2. Recommendations

2.1 That the Committee notes the ongoing and closed actions arising from previous meetings of the Committee.

2.2 That the Committee notes the ongoing action arising from a previous meeting of the Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee.

3. Actions Arising from Meetings of the Budget and Performance Committee

Actions arising from the Committee meeting on 22 September 2020 Agenda Topic Status For action by Item 5. The 20200-21 Budget Review – Police and Fire

The Chief of Corporate Services, Metropolitan Ongoing. The Chief of Corporate Police Service (MPS) agreed to provide the Chairman wrote to Services, MPS following: guests on 6 October 2020.  Details of any transcription services used by the MPS;  A top-line list of income generation by the MPS for the current year and 2019/20; and

City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA Enquiries: 020 7983 4100 minicom: 020 7983 4458 www.london.gov.uk

Page 59 Agenda Topic Status For action by Item  Details of current grant or commissioning funding from Transport for London (TfL) and from local government for policing services provided.

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime agreed Ongoing. The Deputy Mayor for to provide examples of collaboration between the Chairman wrote to Policing and Crime emergency services and the savings that have guests on 6 October been delivered. 2020.

The Committee requested the following additional Ongoing. The London Fire information from the London Fire Commissioner: Chairman wrote to Commissioner guests on  Details of any contractual arrangements in place for training fire safety inspection officers to 6 October 2020. ensure newly trained staff are retained within the Brigade;

 The progress that has been made against transformation plan in percentage terms along with any other relevant updates on delivering the plan;  A top-line list of income generated by the Brigade in this year and 2019/20;

 An update on the fleet replacement project in

terms of finances and timescales;

 An update on efforts to contribute to the Mayor’s Homes for London programme; and

 A breakdown of the £2 million Grenfell legal fee.

The Committee agreed that authority be delegated Ongoing. Senior Policy to the Chairman, in consultation with party Group Adviser Lead Members and Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM, to agree any output from the meeting.

Page 60 Actions arising from the Committee meeting on 7 July 2020 Agenda Topic Status For action by Item 10. Impact of COVID-19 on GLA Group Finance

That authority be delegated to the Chairman, in Closed. Senior Policy consultation with party Group Lead Members and Advisor Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM, to agree any output from the discussion at the meeting.

Actions arising from the Committee meeting on 11 June 2019 Agenda Topic Status For action by Item 5. Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) Risks

That authority be delegated to the Chairman, in Closed. Senior Policy consultation with party Group Lead Members and Advisor Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM, to agree any output from the discussion at the meeting.

Actions arising from the Committee meeting on 21 May 2019 Agenda Topic Status For action by Item 5. TfL Capital Projects Delivery

That authority be delegated to the Chairman, in Closed. Senior Policy consultation with Party Group Lead Members and Advisor Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM, to agree any output from the discussion.

Page 61 4. Actions Arising from Meetings of the Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee

Action arising from the meeting of 20 March 2019 Agenda Topic Status For action by Item

11. Any Other Business the Chairman Considers Urgent During the course of the discussion, the Divisional Ongoing. Officers Divisional Finance Finance and Procurement Director, Surface followed up this and Procurement Transport, TfL, offered for TfL to provide a action on Director, Surface briefing to Assembly Members on the long-term 2 September 2020. Transport, TfL brand partnership proposals with Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.

5. Legal Implications

5.1 The Committee has the power to do what is recommended in this report.

6. Financial Implications

6.1 There are no financial implications to the GLA arising from this report.

List of appendices to this report: None

Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 List of Background Papers: None

Contact Officer: Laura Pelling, Principal Committee Manager Telephone: 020 7983 5526 E-mail: [email protected]

Page 62 Agenda Item 5

Subject: The 2020-21 Budget Review – LLDC and OPDC

Report to: Budget and Performance Committee

Report of: Executive Director of Secretariat Date: 14 October 2020

This report will be considered in public

1. Summary

1.1 This report sets out background information in relation to Budget and Performance Committee questions to senior representatives from the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) and Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) about anticipated changes to spending plans following the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Recommendations

2.1 That the Committee notes the report as background to putting questions to invited guests on the 2020-21 Budget Review and notes the discussion.

2.2 That the Committee delegates authority to the Chairman, in consultation with party Group Lead Members and Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM, to agree any output from the meeting.

3. Background

3.1 The Mayor’s Final Budget for 2020-21 was published in March 2020. Since then the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the largest economic crisis to face London since the Second World War. Business rates and council tax income are both predicted to fall significantly as a result of the wider economic contraction. This is the money used to pay for vital services in London, including transport.

3.2 The Mayor is anticipating losing £493 million of business rates and council tax income in 2020-21 and 2021-22, which would require significant cuts to the budgets of all Mayoral bodies. In June the Mayor asked the Greater London Authority (GLA) and its functional bodies to immediately repurpose their agreed 2020-21 Budget, to deliver in-year savings and efficiencies leading to a fundamental realignment of the GLA Group’s activity to support London’s recovery from the impact of COVID-19.

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4. Issues for Consideration

4.1 The following guests have been invited to attend the meeting to discuss the 2020-21 budget for the LLDC:  Lyn Garner, Chief Executive, LLDC;  Gerry Murphy, Executive Director of Financial, Commercial and Corporate Services, LLDC; and  David Gallie, Executive Director of Resources, GLA.

4.2 The following guests have been invited to attend the meeting to discuss the 2020-21 budget for OPDC:  Liz Peace CBE, Chair, OPDC;  David Lunts, Interim Chief Executive Officer, OPDC;  Fiona Marsh, Interim Chief Finance Officer, OPDC; and  David Gallie, Executive Director of Resources, GLA.

4.3 The Committee will also question the Mayor, his Chief of Staff, and the GLA Executive Director of Resources on 22 October 2020.

5. Legal Implications

5.1 The Committee has the power to do what is recommended in this report.

6. Financial Implications

6.1 There are no direct financial implications of this report.

List of appendices to this report: None

Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 List of Background Papers: None

Contact Officer: Gino Brand, Senior Policy Advisor Telephone: 07511 213765 Email: [email protected]

Page 64 Agenda Item 6

Subject: Budget and Performance Committee Work Programme

Report to: Budget and Performance Committee

Report of: Executive Director of Secretariat Date: 14 October 2020

This report will be considered in public

1. Summary

1.1 This report sets out the Budget and Performance Committee timetable for the remainder of 2020.

2. Recommendation

2.1 That the Committee notes its work programme for the remainder of 2020.

3. Background

3.1 The Committee receives a report monitoring the progress of its work programme at each meeting.

4 Issues for Consideration

4.1 The Mayor’s Final Budget for 2020-21 was published in March 2020. Since then the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the largest economic crisis to face London since the Second World War. Business rates and council tax income are both predicted to fall significantly as a result of the wider economic contraction.

4.2 During 2020-21 the Committee will scrutinise the changes to the Mayor’s 2020-21 budget from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as proposals for the 2021-22 Budget for the Greater London Authority (GLA) Group on behalf of the London Assembly, as well as examine specific budget and performance issues across the GLA Group.

Schedule of Meetings 4.3 The Committee’s meetings for September to December 2020 were agreed under delegated authority by the Chair of the GLA Oversight Committee on 20 July 2020. Some of the meeting dates have been amended in order to accommodate guests’ availability, as agreed by the Chairman and party Group Lead Members. The schedule for the Budget and Performance Committee meetings is set out below:

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Date Topic

Thursday 22 October 2020 2020-21 Budget Review – Mayor

Tuesday 24 November 2020 2021-22 Budget Scrutiny

Tuesday 8 December 2020 2021-22 Budget Scrutiny

Thursday 10 December 2020 2021-22 Budget Scrutiny

5 Legal Implications

5.1 The Committee has the power to do what is recommended in this report.

6 Financial Implications

6.1 There are no direct financial implications to the GLA arising from this report.

List of appendices to this report: None

Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 List of Background Papers: None Contact Officer: Gino Brand, Senior Policy Adviser Telephone: 07511 213765 Email: [email protected]

Page 66