Minutes of the Meeting of the Council held in the Great Hall, Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street, London, W8 7NX at 6.30pm on 18 July 2018 PRESENT Members of the Council THE MAYOR: CLLR MARIE-THERESE ROSSI THE DEPUTY MAYOR: CLLR MOHAMMED BAKHTIAR ADDENBROOKE, Sarah LARI, Sina ADOURIAN, Hamish LINDSAY, David ARETI, Aarien MARSHALL, Quentin ATKINSON, Robert MASON, Pat BENNETT, Tom McVEIGH, Sof BERRILL-COX, Adrian MILLS, Julie BLAKEMAN, Judith NAIL, Nadia CAMPBELL, Elizabeth O’CONNOR, Charles CHAUHAN, Dr Max PALMER, Matthew CYRON, Anne PASCALL, Will DENT COAD, Emma PRESS, Monica ELNAGHI, Marwan RENDALL, Josh EVANS, Janet SCHMETTERLING, Dori FAULKS, Catherine SPALDING, Malcolm FREEMAN, Robert TAYLOR-SMITH, Kim HAMMOND, Gregory THALASSITES, Johnny HARGREAVES, Gerard THAXTER, Portia HEALY, Pat WADE, Linda HENDERSON, Ian WASON, Ian HUSBAND, James WILLIAMS, Charles IDRIS, Walaa WOODGER, Maxwell KEMAHLI, Cem 1. MAYOR’S ANNOUNCEMENTS The Mayor said it would be appropriate for the meeting to start by standing in silence for 72 seconds to remember all those who lost their lives in the Grenfell tragedy. Members of the Council, officers and guests stood to observe the 72 second silence. The Mayor said that the Council meeting had moved into the Great Hall for this meeting as the Council would be discussing the governance review and wanted to make sure as many people as possible could be in the room. 2. MINUTES OF THE MEETING HELD ON 20 JUNE 2018 The minutes of the meeting held on 20 June 2018 were confirmed as a correct record and were signed by the Mayor. 1 3. CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S COMMUNICATIONS Apologies Apologies for absence were submitted on behalf of Cllrs Jackson, Round, Thompson Weale and Will. Apologies for lateness were submitted on behalf of Cllr Freeman. Declarations of interest The Mayor and Cllr Freeman declared interests in Motion 1 as members of the Citizens’ Advice Board. Cllr Press declared an interest as a trustee of Citizens’ Advice. Cllr Healy declared an interest as a trustee of the North Kensington Law Centre. 4. PUBLIC SPEAKING The Mayor advised that the Council would be providing up to an hour at each meeting to allow residents to speak on any matter of local interest or concern and make their, or the views of those on behalf of whom they are speaking, known to the Council. Each person could speak for up to five minutes each. At the end of the session appropriate Lead Members and other Councillors may respond briefly. The Mayor introduced Dr Catherine Howe from the Democratic Society who facilitated the session. She explained that a detailed note would be taken of the points made by each speaker and replies to all points raised would be put on the Council’s website. A summary of each speech is set out below: Speaker 1 - David Trodden (Philbeach Gardens, Earl’s Court) Mr Trodden welcomed the fact that the Save The Earl’s Court campaigners and Save Earl’s Court Supporters Club now had a meeting with Deputy Leader to discuss the faltering Earl’s Court Masterplan. He said that the Council must not leave the remaining 22 acres in the Royal Borough as a wasteland with an uncertain future. The intention was for a more equitable masterplan to emerge, one that represented an opportunity to achieve a range of the social housing options that were needed. He called on the Council to work with such groups to achieve the vision. Speakers 2/3 - Yvette Williams (Justice for Grenfell) and Amanda Beckles (Grenfell Community Monitoring Project) Ms Williams spoke of scrutiny of the Council and its accountability to residents. She drew attention to the Council’s website which stated that the Council had a track record of being a well-run, high-performing authority which was committed to achieving continuous and measurable improvement in its service delivery. She suggested this should be removed. She considered that a change in behaviour and culture was needed. She spoke of complaints about how staff were delivering “high quality services” and that the Council needed to address how it treated its staff and what action it was taking. 2 Ms Beckles drew attention to Barry Quirk’s ‘Fit for New Purposes’ report and considered that poor implementation had contributed to the lack of continuity in service delivery and was the reason why residents had not seen the positive changes expected. She asked for the Council to capture in detail how services had failed and the type of culture that supported this failure. The Council should provide risk assessments and equality impact assessments for the recent restructure. She also asked for information about the number of exit interviews carried out with staff and any analysis completed, including the reasons for leaving and the protected characteristics of these employees. She asked for a report about how the Council had used this information to improve services across all departments. She contended that staff were being ‘micro-managed’ - a signal that managers did not trust them. This had had a detrimental effect on services. It was also clear to her that policy changes were not being effectively communicated to staff. The Council should provide the results of all customer satisfaction surveys for each department for the last 13 months. Since the fire the number of contractors had increased. Contractors should be monitored in terms of their ability to deliver a high-quality service and their ability to ensure that residents were not disadvantaged due to their protected characteristics. She said that addressing inequality in the workplace must be a priority for RBKC. Speaker 4 - Sonia Rai Ms Rai suggested that the RBKC Planning Department should attach a condition to control noise from the construction process. She proposed that all future planning consents where construction was to last for more than four weeks should only be granted with a condition covering noise and nuisance – a ‘construction noise reduction plan’. This would follow-up the welcome introduction of ‘construction traffic management plans’. She said that other councils had a noise condition and residents of RBKC should also benefit from such protection. Speaker 5 - Samia Badani (Notting Dale resident and member of Notting Dale Advisory Board) Ms Badani spoke of the Notting Dale Advisory Board, a network of a number of residents’ associations which represented over 1,100 households. Plans were in place to look at how unrepresented blocks could join. She asked why the Council was resisting residents’ efforts instead of fully embracing and empowering local people. She said that decisions continued to be made behind closed doors and without resident involvement. This was the very culture that needed to change. She added that residents associations were representative of local people and the Council should engage with them. By listening to local people the Authority could ensure that communities had genuine opportunities to engage and be involved in decisions that affected them. This was a legal requirement. Speaker 6 – Liz (Ladbroke Grove resident since mid-1970s) Liz spoke about changing how the Council interacted with residents to an asset-based, rather than a deficit-based approach. An asset-based approach looked at residents as an asset with intelligence, expertise and skills – whereas a deficit-based approach was one which saw residents as vulnerable and needing support. 3 There was a network of people trying to develop community-led housing options, but she had found it impossible to interact as an equal and an expert with councillors. Residents would be powerful if they were empowered. They needed ways that they could be paid to develop community projects, rather than being required to volunteer on panels. Speaker 7 - Isis Amlak (local resident) Ms Amlak spoke of the Housing Allocations Policy which remained unjust. She asked why wasn’t there a separate policy for the people that survived Grenfell and the people in the local area who had been evacuated? She asked about voluntary sector funding this year, in particular the small grants fund to support grass roots organisations. Funding of £1,500 was a very small amount and she considered that it should be at least doubled this year. She also spoke of inept delivery of services at The Curve and asked whether people were being bribed into using their services. Women wanting to attend training had been told they would get support at The Curve: they then turned up and were told they could not have any crèche services or be supported unless they attended activities. Ms Amlak spoke of the proliferation of prep. schools in the Borough. She asked how many received charitable business rates and whether a cap could be put on the number being built in the area. She was also concerned at reports that Thomas Jones Primary School, a state school, was charging £2,000 per term for nursery provision. She reiterated concerns about the policies in this Borough that reward the wealthy and penalised the poor, particularly in respect of discounts for the payment of Council Tax. Was there any data to show which households in the Borough paid Council Tax in full, particularly by Ward? And also, by offering this discount, how much of a reduction in RBKC’s income did that amount to annually? Speaker 8 – John Learmonth (Vice-Chair, Hillgate Village RA) Mr Learmonth spoke of the long-running battle over the Newcombe House site. In the past three years developers’ proposals had been rejected twice by the Council’s Planning Committee, once by the Planning Inspectorate and overwhelmingly by the local community. On the last application there were almost 1,000 public comments, of which 80% were objections. After being rejected for the second time by the Planning Committee in January, the application was called-in by the Mayor of London in March.