Corporate Scrutiny Committee - Friday 22 September 2023, 10:00am - West Yorkshire Combined Authority Webcasting

Corporate Scrutiny Committee
Friday, 22nd September 2023 at 10:00am 

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  1. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
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  1. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
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  1. Mr Khaled Berroum (Scrutiny Officer)
  2. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
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  1. Mr Khaled Berroum (Scrutiny Officer)
  2. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
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  1. Katie Wilby
  2. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  3. Mr Sam Bacon
  4. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  5. Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council)
  6. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  7. Mr Sam Bacon
  8. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  9. Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council)
  10. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  11. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  12. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  13. Cllr Betty Rhodes
  14. Cllr Paul Wray
  15. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  16. Cllr Paul Wray
  17. Cllr Betty Rhodes
  18. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  19. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  20. Cllr Betty Rhodes
  21. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  22. Cllr Paul Wray
  23. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  24. Cllr Paul Wray
  25. Katie Wilby
  26. Cllr Paul Wray
  27. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  28. Cllr Paul Wray
  29. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  30. Cllr Paul Wray
  31. Mr Sam Bacon
  32. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  33. Cllr Paul Wray
  34. Cllr Mike Barnes
  35. Cllr Paul Wray
  36. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  37. Cllr Mike Barnes
  38. Cllr Paul Wray
  39. Cllr Susan Lee-Richards
  40. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  41. Cllr Paul Wray
  42. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  43. Cllr David Nunns
  44. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  45. Katie Wilby
  46. Cllr Alun Griffiths
  47. Katie Wilby
  48. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  49. Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council)
  50. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  51. Patrick Bowes, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  52. Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council)
  53. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  54. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  55. Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council)
  56. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  57. Cllr Alun Griffiths
  58. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  59. Cllr Samantha Harvey
  60. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  61. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  62. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  63. Patrick Bowes, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  64. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  65. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  66. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  67. Cllr Susan Lee-Richards
  68. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  69. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  70. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  71. Cllr Susan Lee-Richards
  72. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  73. Cllr Paul Wray
  74. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  75. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  76. Patrick Bowes, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  77. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  78. Cllr Paul Wray
  79. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  80. Cllr Betty Rhodes
  81. Mr Sam Bacon
  82. Cllr Alun Griffiths
  83. Mr Sam Bacon
  84. Cllr Alun Griffiths
  85. Mr Sam Bacon
  86. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  87. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  88. Cllr Alun Griffiths
  89. Cllr Alun Griffiths
  90. Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council)
  91. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  92. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  93. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
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  1. Craig Taylor
  2. Craig Taylor
  3. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  4. Cllr Betty Rhodes
  5. Craig Taylor
  6. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  7. Craig Taylor
  8. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  9. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  10. Cllr Betty Rhodes
  11. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  12. Cllr Paul Wray
  13. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  14. Craig Taylor
  15. Craig Taylor
  16. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  17. Craig Taylor
  18. Cllr Betty Rhodes
  19. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  20. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  21. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  22. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  23. Alan Reiss, Chief Operating Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  24. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
  25. Craig Taylor
  26. Craig Taylor
  27. Cllr Barry Anderson (Chair)
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  1. Webcast Finished

1 Apologies for absence

Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:00:00
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:00:01
first meeting of the Corporate Scrutiny Committee for a West Yorkshire Combined Authority for the current year,
what we'll do is we'll just briefly go round the room and everybody can introduce themselves because some of us have met
offline,
others
know each other intimately because it is a fact the associations, others it might be new to people I'm Councillor, Barry Anderson I come from Leeds.
I am harness gales and Scrutiny support Officer.
and tell the born statutory Scrutiny Officer.
mousse crook, Councillor from Kirkley.
the Watson Tetley's Councillor.
Sue Richards Co, please, Councillor. Jane Dowson, Councillor furor from Chapel Allerton Leeds
Councillor Paul Reya, Leeds City Councillor,
Betty, Rhodes, Wakefield, Councillor.
and Peter Wilby Corporate performance manager.
and Sunday can have a strategy in cupboard before we serve construction, you wonder if I say.
I have run him Alan reason, chief operating officer at the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
a Patrick was head of research
and intelligence at the Combined Authority.
high Craig Taylor, head of strategic portfolio management
at the Combined Authority.
as Samantha Harvey from Wakefield rural thanks.
Andrew Wolof, from City of York, Council.
Alan Griffiths Bradford
raspberry, Councillor Wibsey, Bradford.
Mike Barnes Calderdale feeling a bit lonely.
Eric
yeah well 0, equal welcome to the right, so we can start with agenda item 1, and I'll pass on to colleague for this one.
formal apologies from Councillor Richard Foster,
obviously we are caught 12 minutes
okay.
number 2, item 2, Have you received any declarations, no anybody you get any declarations to declare?
there are no items or exclusion of the press,
so I wasn't at the last meeting and item 4 for those where there is no, these are true and accurate record.
yet

4 Minutes of the last meeting held on 20 January 2023

in terms of item 5, again, I wasn't present at that one, but they are true, inaccurate record, creating a recollection yeah yeah, right in terms of my comments, just basically welcome. Hopefully we have a good productive year

6 Chair's comments and update

so far since I've been poached, I've met a number of officers had some excellent
briefings and updates on what's happening and equally I've challenged back again, but anybody who knows me knows that I'm quite capable of challenging back again, and so so far it's been a really good start
when it comes to the Forward Plan, we will your views, as you were not happy with the general thrust and direction that were going on,

7 Scrutiny and governance arrangements

and the only other thing is the way I try and run the Scrutiny Board is make the presumption that everyone has read the papers beforehand and I don't want officers to come along and effectively read out the report that has already spent time doing so it just. that's the way I choose to to run to do things, so that's the only comments an update, I've got what right item, 7 Scrutiny and governance arrangements police, launched just briefly, I shall introduce what we've got there.
yeah just remembers to know.
Mr Khaled Berroum - 0:04:03
the arrangements that were agreed by the Combined Authority at the annual meeting. the terms of reference and standing orders are attached, the constitution is leaked.
to know, obviously this can be as a corporate committee in its remit is in Appendix 1.
as
outlined, essentially and anything that is corporate related finance resources, as well as any function that does not fall within the terms of reference of any other obvious group Kimi shyster capsule to make sure everything is covered and any function which covers more than one overview and scrutiny committee,
although in practice obviously the other two are transport infrastructure and economy, in practice the chairs, we've not had it as much as an issue in the past, but if there was a topic that covered multiple committees, the scrutiny chairs and members often can determined where
it's best for a particular issue to go.
reminded about meeting dates should be in everyone's diaries, obviously this meeting meeting on 14th November 19th of January, which will be the Mayor's question time, Last month, on the 8th of March, we should move from the 15th March
that won't be in the afternoon
quorum reminded about quorum
this meeting is quorate, which is good, but the quorum is set by legislation, it's not something that we say we have to abide by the two thirds, which is 11 members.
Page 12 has the members a list of members
again by law has to be politically balanced.
the Scrutiny combined authority scrutiny committees have to be chaired by
the opposition, that is members of a party.
different to the Mayor
and 2.9 lists all the new members who have joined us for this year.
substitute arrangements, any member neither substitute can be substituted for by anyone from one of the other two scrutiny committees from the same party and council, and if you don't have a
another Scrutiny Committee, you can appoint a personal substitute which and the members who need those are listed in 2.12,
not everything.
I am going any comment or happy to approve.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:06:21
to approve,
thank you

8 Corporate Scrutiny Work Programme

item 8 on the agenda,
which is the Forward Plan you wanted to give with
one letter. that one
Mr Khaled Berroum - 0:06:37
so we did worth playing in a meeting in July
or informally.
where members met in person, there were some tech issues, but we did follow up with
members who weren't able to attend just to make sure everyone had the views
represented, and the resulting work programme is in Appendix 1, which is pages 29 and 30.
in for the purpose of the item and just for Members to approve essentially.
confirm that happy with the to obviously the topic on the agenda today or around the agenda,
but there is for the subsequent meetings in November and January, a couple of topics don't have dates yet.
and there's some suggestions about a particular.
issues or projects that we haven't assigned dates yet, but
any
comments, yeah,
origins changes everywhere in comments on the proposed work plan.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:07:37
however, we are happy to approve it,

9 Strategic focus and performance monitoring

happy to approve it, thank you good bye item, no rights, or the first substantive item that we've got to do now, Katie are you actually present you presenting this?
Katie Wilby - 0:07:59
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:08:03
iView and so are I'm Sunday, giving him or her strategy and corporate performance, as I said, thank you Chair good morning Councillors, so
Mr Sam Bacon - 0:08:09
basically I'm the head of service that which the corporate performance sits under a kind of performance measurement of things. The report that is in your pack that you will have seen is authored by my colleague Katie, who works on a corporate performance and planning team,
and so we're both here to answer any questions you may have and talk through the report and and the things contained within it. We did. We sit under strategy in communications and intelligence, so it used to sit under Alan in his old role. Obviously, we are waiting the incoming correct or better yet. Hence that's
we kept well there's pointing to Alan because he used the spelt irritating as the timescale
that I am still
responsible for this area, yes yeah, but you know we were here to yeah to answer any questions you may have, the report itself, as you will have seen is is around the process of how we measure.
the the organisations performance and and the the things that we look at the kind of processes we use and as a bit of data about how we're doing in some key areas, we also listed in the report on the appendix this is the state of the region which is undertaken by Ali Patrick whose sat to my left who's had research intelligence, so any specific questions around the state of the region would be for Patrick but in general yeah very happy to take.
the Commission is on record, if you like, what I don't want us to try and get involved in is looking at the individual performance measures
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:09:30
that are dealt with by other parts of the Combined Authority. It basically the logic
and the information that they're getting at the getting access to the information that is necessary and putting it in the format because when I will give him a briefing, one of the comments I made was one of the appendices, in my view with more detailed and then the other and it was explained to me why there was a difference between the two of them, but that's the sort of logic that we're looking at there. Do you think it's evidence-based or not evidence-based
and the other things that you might want to look at
how will we actually measuring the performance, what we're using as the the baseline for these things and how we can?
who is but one of the questions I had, for example, is who is responsible for delivering on those things. yes, we know who the officer is, but apart from the Mayor, is there any other person or elected member who's got responsibility for ensuring the delivery is made, because
one thing that did surprise me when I took over the chairing this one is that there are no elected Members here today to hold to account. that's unusual, because normally you'd have an elected member, because an officer shouldn't be making any political comment about the logic or otherwise of anything, it should be an elected member, but, as was pointed out to me, there is only one elected member actually employed by the by the Combined Authority the Mayor and she can't be everywhere doing everything at the same time, so that was that was one of the surprise I came out when I looked at performance measurement for the first time was to find out who is actually accountable for delivering the measures here and to let as part of it, so so could you anybody any questions they would like to ask
yeah yeah Jane?
however, it had to be made at night, and I'm just looking at page 39
Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council) - 0:11:30
and an olive colour charts of the federate on, because you can add is telling us a lot or hide a lot of things at the same time.
and naturally, when we focus on the red ones and you've got at 2.00.2 2 point to
a lot of reds and blues suddenly becoming amber, so are they're getting very good at things or very bad things were improving or declining, and now is that just because you haven't got the statistics yet and you stuck an amber in or is that because you actually know that we're improving and the other thing is and,
a lot of us actually live in villages and not just towns and cities.
by putting towns and cities you're actually totally dismissing a huge area of the West Yorkshire region, which is actually rural,
so I personally would like to see that broadened out so that people don't focus just on towns and cities,
they focus on the whole of West Yorkshire, thank you Chair
I would like to respond to that.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:12:37
yeah, thank you, Councillor, so on the first point, in terms of the colours and ends of how do we end up with the RAG rating and just for
Mr Sam Bacon - 0:12:45
people's awareness that the blue
is essentially good is green, we've changed that because of a colour-blindness issues and to make it
losing our if I'm just just the double-check in case people didn't do as I say it's a new innovation for us, we've only just moved to that system.
but the the the way that we do it is that there's a framework in terms of
evidencing that
although things have got better, so, as you said, something's moving from, say, red to amber o amateur blue.
the Head of Service would
so demonstrate that you know, we've we've you'd be paying your annual monthly reports, let's say, yeah yeah, you talk about housebuilding, what we've we've done X X many more this month, so therefore the is we're more on track or things are better. That's then signed off by both the director and the kind of D and T, and then ultimately I'll be so it's kind of is not just an arbitrary colouring there's a kind of a dyslexic process. They have to go through to make sure that that's yeah, this is not just kind of we're deciding OK, well, you know, we're gonna just change that to make it look better, there has to be evidence. Pack thing
I don't know in case you want to say more on that or from the fuss thus far.
on the rural point app, so you can look at the the language, I'm sure if that's in one of the particular targets, but if it is and we can certainly go back to that head of service and we've just got to go into the planning phase for the next year so we can make sure that language is reflected.
you come back again yet.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:14:17
I mean that the methodology used would be quite interesting to know on actually making those decisions
Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council) - 0:14:25
and, looking at these or bogeyman, what the Chair said and the other committees to look at other elements of this.
and it's very topical at the moment that we're looking at the green agenda and sustainability and so on, but a lot of the ones that we've got worse at or you've got worse at as WYCA are actually initiatives around
sustainability says nature rich in carbon neutral has gone down, driving economic growth and innovation to enable good jobs has gone down. So a lot of the things that really WYCA are here to support seem to have gone gone down, and that's probably just a comment as opposed to a question because I understand it's not your area,
our yeah happy
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:15:04
to have it's going so the
the ratings of against the seven corporate objectives are to do with
Alan Reiss - 0:15:11
how the organisation is progressing against the commitments that it's made within its business plan, so the say the ratings that are on the that are in the left-hand column,
which
in the main report which talked about the 2023 end of year status that shows to what extent did we achieve the things that we set out to do at the beginning of the year, the
and by the end of the year. How well have we done and so effectively? What they're showing is that against the communities are empowering our communities, towns and cities to thrive. There were some things that we missed and some of those things were to do around the development of a housing strategy, for instance, which we didn't achieve that year, and therefore it was red and then on creating an accessible, clean and customer focused transport system. The reason that was read was because of a continuing drop off in patronage
following from COVID
the 2023 current status is to do with the extent to which we are on track to achieve our objectives for the for the coming year
and so, for instance, something like building a sustainable nature rich in carbon neutral region. That is that is amber at the moment, because there are some areas of the climate and environment plan which we have limited confidence that we would achieve at the end of the year. So the I, I think there's there's an important distinction to make which the report tries to do between
what the outcomes are, that we're trying to achieve as a region which is set out in the state of the region report and what we are and the objectives that we're trying to achieve as an organisation
and that table at 2.00.2 2.2 is about our organisational objectives for the year?
yeah right, I've got
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:16:49
Councillor Ross and Councillor Barnes and Councillor Ray and I just noticed Councillor Roberts as well.
so Councillor Rogers, first of all.
Councillor Dawson is the one part of the Council on task as well.
and do not have to mission statements, chair had gone out the window a
Cllr Betty Rhodes - 0:17:09
long time ago.
in reference to how we to look at performance indicators and performance actions and outputs.
and I'm sorry to be cynical about emissions, I think we have gone past the mission statements we're now into performance indicators,
there's a lot of information yet and first of all.
Councillor Dawson Jane mentioned about the colours
and we did get a note saying that the RAG system colours have changed.
it was actually a bit amazed about that Chair, because all the authorities out there, I know a lot of them, are still on the old colour rogue regime where you can make the comparisons with across the patch, and I wonder why that has happened actually.
and colours and numbers can have a lot of work going on underneath that may be a concern that we should be having in our performance indicators,
looking looking through the the chats that we've been given
and I hate that word dough given emissions nonetheless,
I wonder we have columns here not included in the 2023 report due to data or availability issues,
now
I sit on the Management Board in terms of performance raising issues across the authority.
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:18:37
and I'm wondering why we haven't got a first quarter or a second quarter here, that we can make comparisons with, rather than a column that tells us nothing
and why don't we have
a first quarter of 3rd quarter 4th quarter because they are all very relevant to the financial arrangements and management and accountability and performance across the authority, and I'm sure the same applies for WYCA. So can somebody just explain why
we're in September we have no quarter availability here on issues where we haven't performance that we can actually say. As Jane has said, we're on track, what was the target and we reaching the target if we're not, why not,
and I'd just picked up her, I wrote down to forgive me Chair about the housing issue,
there was a reasons give me, Can you go back on that again, but there was a delay in the target about a housing issue.
Alan Reiss - 0:19:38
yes, it's, because in the corporate plan for last year we had one of our key things that we were going to do, is developing a housing strategy, yes, there were some other, there were other targets around there, around actual delivery of hope of homes such as the delivery of homes through the brownfield housing fund,
which has got a number of challenges associated with it. am I on it's only two or a red rating but one, but there were some other commitments that we made in the Corporate Plan which we didn't deliver, and one of them was the development of the new housing strategy
OK, thank you, I was here last year in a hurdle about that as well.
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:20:07
could you tell us why and where it is unchecked, now being s of our authorities, as we know, we have
a great shortage of housing?
and chair.
Cllr Betty Rhodes - 0:20:19
don't think I'm picky, but maybe I am
one a statement is made like that in terms of performance indicators and stuff, why haven't we got the reason why, in front of us, instead of just indicating through a statement that it's not been done, I am surely that's one of the priorities across all our authorities in in relation to housing
and I would actually really see that we're getting more information on all these missions that are here. rather than blanks do forgive me Chair, and if I'm being picky, I hope you understand and officers
thanks, Councillor I'm sorry, I'm going to address a couple of a couple of points and then if I might ask a question of just
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:21:00
clarification, so I can help the committees as much as possible, so
Alan Reiss - 0:21:06
the first is that on the housing the reason the Housing Strategy was delayed was entirely to do with internal capacity so challenges in recruitment, the need to move officers onto other priorities and so we didn't develop the housing strategy last year in terms of brownfield housing fund. there have been a number of challenges with it
which have resulted in us not progressing it as quickly as we would like to have done. There are a number of approvals that have recently come through the Combined Authority, so the last Combined Authority, I'm trying to I'm grappling for the number, but I think of the last Combined Authority. There was something like 750 homes approved through the brownfield housing fund in a range of developments within Leeds, and then there are some other brownfield housing and fund schemes coming through the pipeline, so it is now moving, but there are a range of challenges, with the brownfield housing fund largely to do with how you can achieve value for value for money so
the SA,
so one of the challenges is that, because of the way the government has set the criteria, it is easier to make the case for using the brownfield housing fund in locations. in Leeds than it is in other parts of the region, that is not to say that the proposals are only coming forward in Leeds, they are coming through in other parts of the region, but the most recent set of proposals were where all Leeds, that's true, but we did, we have recently brought forward around 750 homes as part of the brownfield housing fund so that's that's on that sometimes I'm sorry, Councillor Oates, could you just point me to where you're you're suggesting that we're saying there's no data available
on pages when we look at the West Yorkshire Plan initial statements on
Cllr Betty Rhodes - 0:22:45
all of those yeah every page there?
given that information, you have two lines for inflammation, no indicators,
obviously three,
and we leave, and there's nothing there, I don't see, I don't see any target rate right sanctions target rate should be against these where you're out with at what we've achieved and then in the second column it says not included in 23 report due to data availability issues. forgive me, Oscar I started off by saying that she would ask the question first,
is it not in terms of performance indicators that you look at quarters throughout the year, so you can actually see what you achieve and against the targets?
Geoff
Alan Reiss - 0:23:29
Bushell. so it depends so if there are, if it it depends because of the extent to which you are able to measure particular things, so, for example, if we are talking about skills programme or a business support programme and some of the housing programmes, then the data is available one-off on quite a frequent basis and we would look to be able to report those we looked at we'd look to report that that data may be quarterly,
in terms of the regional indicators, and this is the distinction I was making between those indicators which are about how the region is performing versus how the organisation is performing, some of those datasets are only available on an annual basis, and that's what we report through this during the state of the region if I could come to the to Appendix 1 which is the which is page 45 if you're looking online or labelled page 43 which Councillor Rogers is referring to, so the purpose of showing those
those indicators like that is to is to show you how we have mapped the regional indicators across to the missions in the West Yorkshire Plan, the two cones on the right-hand side, are purely to indicate.
Nick new things that we have added for the 2023 report, which will be published this autumn.
or information which it wishes the column called New indicator for 2023, and then the column called not included in 2023 report due to data availability issues, those are where you got a why in there those are data points which we want to be, including in the 2023 states of the region report so
to Councillor Rose's gross question, which is so where is the actual data against all of these indicators if you go further down into the report, there's then a section which is called summary of performance against the indicators from the 2022 report and they're all in there with comment. so that's page 40 that's labelled page 46 onwards
and sales, and lastly Chair, if I may,
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:25:29
I think that in terms of performance reports, this is the most complicated way of dealing with things. and if we're doing region and locally, which obviously I understand, there are West Yorkshire,
why am we got a list of the target items that have been already agreed?
what the targeting for percentage performance is against those.
and I don't think it's beyond the width now, so people are employed through WYCA
to actually, at a point in time, get the relevant performance indicators against targets on a quarterly basis, so the governance of this committee can actually see how the performance of the Authority is going.
only targets against new and actually measurable targets,
which is not on the
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:26:26
back of this report.
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:26:33
yes to we report quarterly to financial services and corporate committee on performance against corporate objectives, the role in the public domain, and they are, they are measurable and published on our
Katie Wilby - 0:26:40
website happy to share those with the committee if it's
helpful for now is not appropriate.
sorry, local authority, people, we are used to getting Victor
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:26:50
it overall, to gratify some employee absences,
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:26:57
I'm we deciding what to put forward, but I think we need to take that as a noting point so that we can feedback because some of the things that we've come here, it's your wellbeing said Judith
future of Central Ward provision should you have to use some other way of prescribing it on, and all that.
the data, while the data isn't, there does appear to be there and is the problem, lack of resources in terms of money or people, which
could you, Mr recent example, is due to jobs at the moment?
a number of other behind the scenes as well is that the issue, or is it a computer system, isn't good enough, is it because you must get
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:27:40
the information from the federal authorities to enable you to deliver
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:27:45
on some of those things we need to look into that so I think yeah bang Saturday,
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:27:53
you just say on on that second points, I think that might be, and it's
Mr Sam Bacon - 0:27:57
an issue we can, we can take away in terms of before we come back.
so future Scrutiny Committee, I think it's probably in terms of layout, I think we've just maybe slightly confused the committee so that the data and the Councillor Burgess is talking about is is further down in the report, it's just the the the way
the table where it says the the status not included in 2023,
it's basically talking about and say the region, but I think that the actual data
and and kind of howled for me and things is is further down, so we we basically, I think, yes, we need to change that,
that the format to make it a bit clearer next time.
you have to refer you to page 69 plus, we've got a lot of detail on that.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:28:40
as we were all coming out, one by one was one
comment we only would I have small writing, I think a lot, and I mean some common
people as well, so you've got we've gone from got a lot of information in one appendix to
drop off too much. I think it is not about, and it's how you get somewhere in between it, and are
we back flat in getting the balance right because people need information, but at the same time is too beautiful of provision.
so you can point to meet me at the point of indulgence at the next day we get the information and it will our cheapest other data, I would like to
thank you Chair,
so I thought Councillor Barnes said pensively in terms of Lee Roberts,
then thank you Chair I think.
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:29:36
I slightly echo the point on the regarding comparative data availability of it and the timing of it being been recent,
we flagged this or essays statutory performance and Colorado regularly and it's still the same issue year on year and in terms of the KPI as
Cllr Mike Barnes - 0:29:52
who determine which KPI indicators will be used,
I'm just conscious of the fact that one of the Mayor's pledges is about protection of women and young men and young young young girls, and yet there's nothing in here about domestic violence is the indicators, and if we look at.
that what happened in the pandemic pandemic, I would have thought domestic violence would have been, would have been contained within there
as a core indicator, so the cynic in me suggests are these indicators being chosen because they're the most favourable, but I am not cynical and also are they challenging enough because if you look at the big three
in particular, sorry, it's meant before what is it over 150 whole households posted to residents,
150?
I mean, that's a strict.
or two streets, and it's overachieved, so I just won and then we had what 9 5 residents engaged, sorry, I should have more of the glasses on the magnifying glass to read the data, sorry about that
I mean, are these KPI as Re kit KPI is really challenging because at 100 households I mean to be honest at a day's work,
it's not really a challenging issue,
any of us campaign would do 100 100 knocking 100 houses into a couple of hours, so are we really happy that some of these K P eyes, and, in particular those that are on and that one is blue, are really challenging.
Thank you
thanks very much chap, so on the
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:31:29
on, to answer the question about domestic violence and domestic abuse.
Alan Reiss - 0:31:37
So the the Mayor's objectives, recent in crime set out in the statutory police and crime plan and a quarterly performance report about that, is published and goes to the police and crime panel, which is the body responsible for scrutinising the mayor's work on policing and crime. However,
we absolutely do not want to separate that from the rest of the combined authorities work all the rest of the reporting, which is why one mission 5 in the West Josh plan is about creating a safe West Yorkshire with a number of objectives associated to it. I have to say I haven't just looked at the list there. I do think it's a good point about domestic abuse. Actually, I think maybe we we should. We should add that in as as far as a as a line into the state of the region
report and because we have got in there rape and sexual offences, and so on, I think it would make sense for us to to make sure that we're including domestic abuse in in that as well.
there is also a, or I've just, the there's, a, there's a strategy about the safety of women and girls, which is underneath the police and crime plan, which has a number of indicators associated with it as well, so that's the that's.
or thus on the on the police and crime Ed I'm definitely will take away that point about a bank cleaning domestic abuse in the state of the region and on the 150 homes point I completely and I absolutely get that, and what this is about is
retrofit so
the in the climate and environment plan which sets out what needs to be done across the region in order to achieve net 0 by 2038.
group sets out that we need to retrofit 700,000 homes. across the region
that is going to take a huge effort, which is why you'll see things like something referred to as the better homes hub which we're setting up which is looking to.
enable us to accelerate a whole house retrofit that 150 figure which I completely agree as a microscopic number compared with 700,000 homes is because it refers specifically to a programme in Manningham. which was funded through the community renewable fund and was effectively a pilot scheme that would then inform how we roll out how her whole house retrofit elsewhere in the region, so that's why the number is so low,
would it not be advisable to to,
is it not a year?
beg?
paragraph point I can.
Cllr Mike Barnes - 0:33:58
yes, Councillor Reid, etc we've got, so my
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:34:02
question is have already been a
telephone Aviv, Robert
Wyatt, thank you Chair
just a quick question, I don't know if I misread it, but on this.
RAG rating from that we've been given and be sick, some of the building and sustainable nature, rich and carbon neutral region, it
Cllr Susan Lee-Richards - 0:34:24
says, ensure all fossil fuel usage continues to be purchased from renewable source sources, I'm not sure I understand that.
yeah
I'm sorry.
Alan Reiss - 0:34:42
obviously I look forward to that and I think that's on thank you, so,
Cllr Paul Wray - 0:34:49
colleagues, I agree that that the wording there does not make particular sense, it should say, ensure annual energy usage continues to be purchased from renewable sources,
Alan Reiss - 0:34:57
so apologies for that so our and our gas and electricity contracts for the Combined Authority are from 100% renewable sources.
thank you for pointing out
my obviously retrospective.
I just got a mental
block.
loss.
yeah, one of its likely.
yeah
yeah thoughts very briefly returned to.
Page 39 of the shouldn't obstruct your time, I'm sorry to have my hand up quickly so we may have lost the last point, did not lost the plot, the
Cllr David Nunns - 0:35:41
the end of year status of let's take, the first one is red.
because that's what it was like at the end of yesterday and then even the current status is amber, presumably because we're halfway through and you've got you're not sure what's going to happen will ring, so you can't say it's all online that's that's what I'm wondering what has happened to the things that didn't get done at the end of 22 23
are they have they been abandoned and forgotten in which case, we have what we've worked putting in the first place if you can afford to to to do not
not worry about them,
are they still being dealt with, in which case what is the process for seeing whether a late success in 22 23 has happened here riveted it we may not to deliver 123 when we finally got that halfway through 23 24 or are we in the 23 24 have they been rolled into 23 24 in which cases have got a bit ambitious to say that they're all BA that lurch forward into him into amber rather than because there is UTV you've not got just got this year's targets and things to do when you actually try to catch up on last year's as well?
Alan Reiss - 0:36:56
I'm happy to confirm that them saw them, in short, the answer is that
Katie Wilby - 0:37:00
we, where things haven't been picked up in a particular year, we then review those as part of the annual business planning process,
so at that point each year which we're going through at the moment we allocate resources and officer capacity to make sure that we're hitting our objectives and inappropriate way so we reprioritise year on year to meet our long-term objectives so things may well have been rolled over but without getting specifics on each on its programme it's difficult to answer that in any depth.
distribution, so what what is the process for
reporting presume to the appropriate committee, not necessarily to and
Cllr Alun Griffiths - 0:37:33
feels that what's been, if you like, grilled on and how you got on with it, what's been abandoned, why, and so that we can sort of scrutinise that?
Katie Wilby - 0:37:48
yeah, so that was through an internal leadership board where we review come in performance monitoring.
and there'll be a
Alan Reiss - 0:37:55
so each year there's a business planning process which takes place internally and then the reports that come through to finance resources and corporate committee and then the Combined Authority, so so working back from February, when the Combined Authority has to set its budget for next year there's a draft budget and business plan presented to the Combined Authority in November or early December and that will make reference to performance in the previous year and how and therefore the things that we are, currently having trained that we possibly
won't achieve this year and therefore need to be rolled over, it will be that it would be set out through that process.
Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council) - 0:38:32
yes, sir comments and some questions have been going down this list. I'm on page 49, and it's a bit of a contradiction. Isn't it, really, the the north south divide does exist. We earn a lot less in the country, but I think it's it's down to a lot of good work by local authorities across the piece that the proportion of people receiving the real living wage is actually higher than it is nationally. So that's that's quite good, but he'd been asked to know what the authorities dealing with its staff to make sure that we are actually narrowing our gap and paying a more appropriate fee. You know burger at McDonald's plus the same here as it does in London. You know things that cost the same, and yet the people living up north are earning a lot less. That can't be right
enable page 50, enabling a skilled and diverse workforce. You take it up to 64, I'm not sure how far back this these figures go, because the retirement age is at 64 anymore.
I've just had my 65th birthday and I can't retire now until I'm 66 and into sending Barry I've no intention of retiring either,
but you know that the 64 is just seems a bit of an arbitrary figure now and quite historical things are moving on it. Yeah yeah, especially for women, who are severely disadvantaged by the increase by not having enough time to prepare going forward for this that this having to work work longer,
financially, absolutely and page 57.
you have got on page 57, the greenhouse gas emissions by sector, and it takes us all the way from 2005 to 2020,
and it's just to note that transport isn't faring too well and I thought we'd have a big push on Electric. with with the contractors and so on, but no doubt transport will be picking picking that up, but it does seem quite surprising how poorly performing that that is because of the emphasis on it,
I'm just won't comment, the better homes hub, absolutely fantastic retrofit is great but as somebody who tried to apply for the last round of government grants and couldn't get any contractors to actually come to my house and and I live in an ex-local authority, leaks like a sieve wooden floor, cavity insulation needed house couldn't get any contractors and you have to have an energy efficiency certificate, I understand as well this time
what has been done by the Authority to skill up and plan for what is needed for the next round of government grants or are you as much in the dark as everybody else thank you.
thank you, I'll come back to committee, sorry responded if she thinks
Alan Reiss - 0:41:19
they're not bringing the colleagues in, so on the issue of wages.
and living standards. so the organisation
and currently pays a living wage supplement to a number of staff in the Combined Authority to ensure that they receive the living wage, even though their base paper does not sorry the real living wage,
good question
I'm not 100% sure, but we can't find out so we will find that we'll find that out.
the, however we are, we consulted earlier this year about how to and build living wage and payments fully into everybody's salary so that the organisation can become a living wage Foundation,
I know you want me to come back on the real living wage I read I realised Theo so we'll come back on that let me I'll have to come back on
come back to the committee on the real living wage point.
the second thing is that the Mayor, one of the most pledges, was to introduce a Fair Work Charter for West Yorkshire, which is going to be launched in November, and we will have a number of businesses and other organisations signed up to it from across
the region and that will,
that will support organisations
to become fairer. Employers across a range of issues is not just to do with pay, it's also to do with conditions, security, learning and development, diversity and inclusion
on carbon
Patrick Mullins coming on this, but transport is certainly one of the more challenging I mean. The carbon agenda is challenging across the piece
40% for memory serves me, rightly, 40% of carbon emissions in West Yorkshire come from transport and 95% of those transport emissions come from private car use. So
so driving Church, I was trying to try to get people to drive their private cars and their private fossil fuel.
fuelled cars. Less and more and public transport is one of the key objectives of the organisation, and that's why we're bringing in,
and hopefully building a mass transport system for the region, et cetera, so,
but I certainly recognise that the that the line on transport is not moving as quickly as we would like it to
and on better homes hub, and so we have we, we've been developing our plans for the better homes up over the last year or so, and it's going it is going to be a major project for the organisation and one of the strands that's in there is around. How do you
develop the workforce that is necessary to deliver the to deliver the change, because one of the challenges in whole house retrofit is dull, is the lack of
the of people with the necessary skills to actually do it, so it's one of the so that that target I referred to earlier, about 700,000 homes being required,
sorry 700,000 homes needing to be retrofitted.
one of the strands of the better homes hub work is about how we develop our work and people with the necessary skills to support us with it. Patrick children, Fiona at yeah
s the aged 64 point
Patrick Bowes, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) - 0:44:38
yeah, on on that point about the employment rate, but that's an official sort of orders, a definition, so so the reason why they have achieved that because it's harmonised, so it enables comparison between the UK and areas in the UK and other countries, so it's a harmonised definition. I mean all of us are acutely aware of this, so
it's a definition based
originally designed by your OECD or Organisation for economic cooperation and Development and they are reviewing that, so there's that there's quite a lot of sort of change happening at the moment on international indicators so yeah yeah, you know the committee may have seen recently that the government changed the weather calculating GDP and that's to reflect sort of that you know improvements in it and those changes are being rolled out in other countries so that that's why aged 16 to 64 Kelly we can provide information on the employment rate for the different age groups as well so that can be reflected in the commentary and in that state of the region.
I think that's why we would do that one, because it allows us to compare not only West Yorkshire or the UK, but other other countries as well.
yeah,
Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council) - 0:45:41
it's it's on the night was 80 or 90% being people driving their own fuel vehicles
to points on that particular one number one, there is not enough investment or enough pre-planning around electric charging points. A large proportion of my residents and no doubt in Bradford and all around the live in houses where people cannot have electric charging points in their own homes because they live in terraces and you're not allowed to have an electric cable, there must be a solution. It would be nice to know if WYCA leading the way on trying to find a solution to allow people to charge from their own homes, because there are not enough electric charging points leading to people making very poor decisions, and I'm I need to change my car now. Do I go to an electric charging point where I'll have to maybe queue for ages to wait to get to a charging point somewhere
or do I actually buy another fossil fuel vehicle I know which way I'm gonna go on and hopefully make the right decision, which is the the electric one, but it makes life very difficult because of one and what are we doing as WYCA to try and find solutions to these problems around electric car charging
because for me yeah, you probably missed the early conversation I live in a village on the edge of Leeds and there is not a direct bus into Leeds from my village, at all, and it isn't one of the main villages, it's on the map, and yet there is no direct bus from my village into Leeds, so please don't tell me to get on onto a a bus that doesn't exist.
I'm just the other thing around retrofit
at that that's it's I mean the hub will be great, have you got timescale on this, and can you tell me what work WYCA are doing with the various building colleges around Leeds, to try and encourage people who will go to the Bill of varying ages and not just young people into a career that will actually tick all the boxes for you, thank you.
OK.
Alan Reiss - 0:47:46
so I've recognised the challenge around electric charging points at home. We have
installed a number of electric charging points across the region. You're gonna probably scoff at the number last year I think it was 88,
which of course is not enough. We want to do more, yeah, I'm sure I'm sure right, it's not enough. What I would add is that it's not simply a case of putting say we had if, if we had all the money there is and we installed accessible electric charging points across all the homes in West Yorkshire, it still wouldn't work properly because then the grid can't take the power, so if there's a month there's a so there's a whole system solution that's required to this, that info and a visit, and that is a national problem, the National Grid not being able to carry sufficient power for for four for there to be universal charging at the moment
so
which we did not say were kind of shrugging their shoulders and at it I can't remember what the what, precisely what the arrangements are, that we've got right now for installing more that I'm pretty sure that through at least one of the transport programmes that we've got going we've been
we are putting some more electric charging points in and we'll have to come back to the Committee on that.
in terms of
the the point about the about, not everybody has the opportunity to use public transport absolutely recognise that, and that's why we are looking at a range of reforms to the transport system, including exploring changes to the bus market.
the
and then, where what else did you ask about you asked about? The are we working with the Building colleges around
the better homes hub? I believe we are,
I would have to come back to the committee on specifics. It's a very good
if we are not all be surprised and certainly it will be a something for the team to team to take on board, but I think we're working with the with Leeds College yeah
o write to the relevant chairs to bring it to their attention so that
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:49:55
they are, for example, the employment Scrutiny side, need to look into the points that Councillor Dobson has just made and bringing them to the attention it unfortunately comes back to the point I was making about political accountability. It's fine us
pinpointing you in saying, Can you do this as in this, but
it's political initiatives that are needed in order to do things you are doing. Are you implementing and doing everything you possibly can within the constraints you've been given? We need to get over the political impetus, does might've as its central government or whether it's at WhipCar, or whether it's in our own local authorities. All three need to have the political will to implement these things, and that's the point Councillor
Dobson and and finally be pleased to hear with regard to the electric charging points and am potentially speaking to on my ward and potentially areas in Bradford Bradford already has the low emission
Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council) - 0:50:53
zone already,
there are a huge number of taxi and private hire drivers that live in in my area and areas of Bradford.
who are being encouraged, not least because of zones and so on, to buy electric cars, so I think it is especially in those areas that have got restrictions
to maybe concentrate on them at the expense of them. of other areas because we do need to look at you because you've got 60 marks against employment and so on and so forth, and yet we're working very hard for some areas of the community to actually and plough
work at their jobs because we're not providing the infrastructure to enable them to do that, so that's just a point
I'm pleased Councillor Dawson showed that because nowhere too I know
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:51:39
as her local councillor I don't have to push for it anyway.
I like to now like my local Councillor.
no electric charging would have seen, my village says,
Look, I can't charge, and the jobs dried up.
sorry, we are just having our usual bouts of duets yeah, Deborah.
Cllr Alun Griffiths - 0:52:09
just following on when the electric vehicle as a recent adopter of electric vehicle,
there's a solution to what you're talking about being adopted, the friend of mine as a councillor in Brent has shown requires putting cabling and dropping points like little covers you if you keep it in your bow when you pull up on the terraced street, you take the charging tower plug in into the pavement and then connect to Chicago and when you leave he moved away but the point, Alan was making about the quality of the grid. is the main problem with those of us who have watched exploding sub sub stations things over the years, and as the son of electrical engineer, you would be shocked to know how old the grid is in some of your areas I work in James Ward, they've just ridden much of the electricity cabling around that era, it's 60 years old some of them you, you're talking people used to have to wedge bits of wood into the. switches to allow it to find out where it was so on. That okay, and I think that point about errors, so we've just got the emission zone. We've just had the first reporting of breath from the impact of that emission zone and, believe me, I've had fun as a councillor with that I'm passionately committed to health for young children and the research we got in Bolton and Bradford on a different policy agree on this, but what I've just seen as it's my hero, impact Bradford as a geographic bulb, but Jane is right, actually many of my constituents in Wibsey drive taxis in Leeds as well and there's quite a lot of them. It's not that far, but I think that's a point that needs following up. I was just going to make a quick point on the way we describe things. I think quite a lot when I, I have sympathy for the officers here, because I have to write reports for a board in another place which I'm coming onto later
sympathy, but when I was looking at housing affordability and rented housing costs, I think a comparison with the national isn't really very relevant to the lives of the people are set at my surgery, and the reality is housing is becoming more and more unaffordable. a comparison with Surrey and Hampshire is of no relevance to my day-to-day experience,
the fact is, it's got worse, our housing in West Yorkshire is relatively affordable, so the national average.
is a point of such banality as to be irrelevant. Returning to say what I would say is housing affordability in West Yorkshire has become more of a problem because housing supply is reduced. The RHI and all the things that talk about retrofit, but when we're giving headline figures I find those kinds Paris's with other places a little bit unhelpful, but I'm familiar with what that takes to get your reports refined, I'll live with it every day,
so that was that was all I was going to say and then the retrofitting
yeah whips' got houses that go back three 400 years, so I've seen what it takes to retrofit, this is a huge job, but if we can start talking about this on it, it's a bit of a bit of a concept we need to prefigure what what people are thinking about. This is outside of people's experience. You're talking about lining every room in your house during every floor, you're talking about putting another layer
of what is in the house I live in built 19 0 5 and its plaster is made of the slack from the fires of Lister's Mill,
so we need to try and put up a shelf if you get through three drills before you've actually put up a shelf that needs something about that sic
to go into it. But every local authority is also giving improvement grants to certain people. DSG grants and everything, and I wonder if there was any possibility of combining some of those, every every house I've seen, that needs a DFW grant would be on your list for, but let's let's let's do that, so the main point I was honoured to make is how we describe things, but also on the AV strategy, if we can look at charging,
by some other priorities than just a head count, which I think what's Jo James suggesting, because the scale of what you're talking about here is absolutely huge, and the streets we're talking about similar to hills is you would need to have something akin to what they're doing in Brent which is to equip people something that will lift the boat and plug it into the pipe.
Thank you.
therefore.
no extra noting, really, I can
ask Councillor Murray, Councillor Waller, Councillor Harvey, and
judge Jani itself Hawthorn for the pilot was decimated. I think it's above a general point of the conversation.
There's lots of information that is very little narrative and a lot of the questions you've got to date about when there's a problem tell us why there's a problem, rather than just saying there's a problem, because actually all the questions from Members today, the why that or why that information in that way and from a Scrutiny perspective, were interesting in standing, why does the problem so that we can scrutinise it and have that conversation? So the general point 8, I get there's a lot of information and I am sure we have this conversation in our own Scrutiny in our own local authority. Tell us the narrative in detail, just don't tell us the headline figure which goes back to your statement about missions, not bothered about the mission. I'm bothered about why the mission hasn't happened,
if that makes sense.
Councillor Paul Lock and Councillor Harvey and Councillor.
thank you Chair.
just picking up on I'm thinking on a regional basis which is written into some of the the strategies.
in terms of the connectivity of the grid.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 0:57:51
the there has been.
and atta you know, discussions, Northern Powergrid had lots of online sessions with councillors talking about across the region what they were doing to enable the power to get to the streets so that people could have electric cars charge charging there without blowing the great one.
by my ward, had a particular problem with them have been blowing it up and it was because of the age of free war yeah
boxes.
so I, I think, is
there's a lot of talk. it's it's understanding the delivery of that and following a the discussion on retrofit the strange sense of deja vu.
the Leeds City region HC A no bid deep project was to do that very task, recognising it wasn't going to be done in one year, it was about building capacity about the conversations with
skills suppliers
and in particular pre 1919 terraced housing being a
or are a major issue, so it's it's understanding,
there's been
a lot of talk about both of those, it's understanding that we're actually getting to a solution
which is
enabling people in West Yorkshire to think Well, I can drag my electric car outside of this bubble. because he'll be able to charge it
to the the wider problem to ensure that that's covered as well, thank you, thank you, thank you,
Councillor Harvey, and then Councillor Lee Richard,
thank you Chair, and no simpleton questions the first one is about the evaluation of local mayors,
you know it is under the way I understand it or has it been completed and what had what the other findings looked like?
Cllr Samantha Harvey - 0:59:52
number 1 number 2, The Empire ticket transactions is still well below the 2019 level and we talk a lot about cardoons emission or that by the public transport at the moment, with the passage it is almost non-existent, so some area in Wakefield boring boundary, so the parents have the Astana way are school-to-school parents has a centre kids too.
another local authority school, but it's not even in West Yorkshire, so they are not qualified for to their bus passes and because not applied, so can we do something about the two Mayor authorities looking at look into it? Some family would have three, children go into a college, go into school and how to pay as much higher fare just because they are living on the border of West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, so I think those need to be looked into.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:00:49
thank you well, I will have to look into the cross, the cross-border issue I mean, as, as everyone will know,
it's a deregulated bus market,
we're and the, and so
I am and one of the
key things that the Mayor and, DMCA in West Yorkshire can potentially benefit from his reforms to the bus market now that we are a devolved Authority and
it that and.
if you, if you were to look at the combine the papers for next week's Combined Authority, which had just been published, you'll see that there is going to be a conversation that the Combined Authority next Thursday about proposed changes to to the bus market,
although no decisions have yet been taken on it
on the points around bus patronage.
Alan Reiss - 1:01:43
Patrick and come in on this, but the I mean essentially ever since COVID
there has been a drop off in bus patronage and we are not yet back to pre COVID levels, are we quite Barberry, Patrick into TOPO?
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:01:59
yes, we're still not back to some recovery levels so average procedures, this hop hovers between until 82 80 80 85%, of of where we were in that sort of a
pandemic sort of baseline, which is sort of at March March 2020 20,
Patrick Bowes, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) - 1:02:15
I think on the point of or around sort of Mayor's mess first of all can come back on that that that's what yes we are evaluating the the the impact of most of those. we are currently sort of following DETI's national methodology, prefer capping when they are the, and we are undertaking sort of primary research with the users of the the bus network and non-users of the bus network to not only understand the impact of mayor's fares, but the effect it's had on that decision. If you're not using a bus as it shifted your your up your view about using a bus and so try and understand that holistically, what the what those issues are around that, so we're actually undertaking that researchers as as as as we speak,
and I think the point on on them, Councillor, I think it would need to check this by
that's particular. It indicated that, yeah, I don't think the information at graph actually shows the m car trips that are captured using the M card app and there's an increasing proportion of of of bus users who were using the M card ambulance on the mobile phone. So I'd need to check that, but I as well so I think I would just add that qualification to that, but I think I can check that for the committee
on the issue of cross on the issue of cross-border working, is there
a group that does meet grot, you know within one of the things that in
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:03:28
local government you were meant to do is to cooperate with our near neighbour Councillors, whether we do or whether we thought we could have a wonderful debate with that sort of tender
there are no bosses in North Yorkshire,
wow but well, but is there a body that it actually exists for cross-border?
meetings to talk about commonality because it's their arbitrary borders. To be quite frank, where West Yorkshire begins and ends is actually quite arbitrary, it's not possible, but we go home and all debate but where it begins and ends, but there is good to be. In effect, I mean Councillor Dowson was referring to a bus, that she would like to come through pools or die, but part of the issue would be, it does affect North Yorkshire and trying to get agreement is the is the issue because they don't necessarily always have the same
preferences as we do in West Yorkshire for various things and that can have a big impact, so is there such a thing as a body where cross-border issues are being discussed, or is there something that scrutiny could suggest is looked into?
Alan Reiss - 1:04:36
certainly, Scrutiny can suggest, as this looked into, if I could just give a or a few points in Re in, in response, to have a landscape looks at the moment, so certainly there are conversations between.
the operators and the local transport bodies, of which we are one,
so the and and and so the, the there's definitely those those conversations to happen, whether a routes that that travel across borders between, say, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester or West Yorkshire and in South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire North Yorkshire and the second is that the Combined Authority itself has already considered some cross-border issues and if I may be so bold, that's partly represented by the fact that Councillor Waller is here from the City of York, Council with the City of York, is a non constituent member of the Combined Authority,
and that is partly to do with the very close economic ties between York and Leeds.
The the the. The next thing I mention is yeah. There is a body which is informal in the sense that it's non-statutory, but the Yorkshire leaders board
brings together all of the leaders of all of the Councils from a cork from across Yorkshire and Humber size and with the existing mayors within Yorkshire, so Oliver Coppard and and Tracy Brabin
and in the future, that would include for the incoming Mayor of York and North Yorkshire from next year,
so and so that body meets to consider Yorkshire wide issues.
The Mayor has regular conversations with her counterparts in
in South Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, and the other final point on this dimension is that of course we have Transport for the North, which meets as a board considering northern northern transport issues BA, and there's both a board and a and a partnership board which brings together a range of stakeholders from across the North to consider region-wide region-wide issues.
Thank you right, I've got Councillor Leigh Richards and then Councillor Ray
no sorry
and just a quick comment on the EV charging, because I'm driving an EV
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:06:38
for nine years. so you've got a rather elderly, Nissan Leaf, that's
Cllr Susan Lee-Richards - 1:06:43
not not easy to charge, with people switching to the CCS charges.
yeah, and it is not a problem apart from that, when they provide charges, you'll get mostly CCS ones, so you can't charge if you've only got one option, so I waited an hour the other day to charge up and I only needed 20 minutes to get home.
in some areas they are, I have think, it's mainly Scotland, they're putting in like small charging hubs.
at such as commercial sort of areas will where people go to shop so that they can they can charge all the shopping, and quite often they put up the.
the solar
panels and have a battery storage system would that work in some of the more rural areas is that something that the Combined Authority would be considering thank you.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:07:39
so similar. Some of what I think is the two to one of the park and
Alan Reiss - 1:07:46
rides think it's statin which we funded does have facility that sounds similar to that. So where people give you can go there and partly car will then and and it's theirs, there are solar panels on the roof and then a minute, and then that enables the the cost to be charged in terms of the wider kind of technical specification goes beyond my expertise, I'm afraid
so we would need to take that way and and consider it
you're responsible for many things, but not that one,
it has her.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:08:12
I'm here to be
here to be scrutinised on any subject that the Committee councillor questions on
the future who aren't deaf.
sorry, just one more comment, if you're you're rolling out the
more charges, though the ones in Kirk, please are not always reliable, so you know there might be there but the not always working. There's
Cllr Susan Lee-Richards - 1:08:38
been quite a few technical issues, I'm not too bad, I'm unfortunate to have a drive back and charge at home most of the time, but if I need a quick judge sometimes they're up and they're often down.
Thank you kick Councillor re
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:08:53
it's just a question just on the bus patronage figures, in terms of the methodology in Leeds, we we've seen bus patronage shift on day, so when you're doing your data analysis, are you giving an overall figure, are you looking at granular, the shifting in passenger habits?
Cllr Paul Wray - 1:09:10
So, for example, we've seen a massive shift in Leeds to the weekend but losses during the midweek, because obviously that would then inform some of those conversations about ticketing regimes route regimes, so how granular is the data getting down to in terms of actually it's not just bus patronage is down, but actually the habit of bus usage has changed because of the nature of, particularly in the biggest cities and towns, how people are interacting with their city centres,
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:09:39
yes, it's just at a very high level, it's a very average, a very average figure, but you are absolutely right, the peaks have changed, it's not just true, the bus was travelling through above car transport
Alan Reiss - 1:09:46
so that some sort of pizza very much changed. They're very different
and yeah, as you say both, but we have not only seen it with bus,
Patrick Bowes, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) - 1:09:53
we're seeing it with rail as well that London was more of a shift to travel a week weekends, so we do
obviously stay at the region reflects its fairly high level, to be able to allow us to compare, but we do more detailed analysis. We have a subtler state of transport report that goes into a lot more detail around this information. We also provide a lot of ongoing monitoring around that, so we do have that, so we do understand bus network its peaks. We do understand the radial sum or road network and its pigs and, and we also look at the rail network as well. Obviously, we don't have as much access some rail data in the way that we would like, but we still we still know where there's pizza, so we do use other information. This just such summarises at a very high level yeah
cutlery, which goes back to my point earlier about narrative, because
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:10:40
actually, from a Scrutiny perspective, understanding there's a narrative under that figure and informs questions for us to
Cllr Paul Wray - 1:10:47
scrutinise, so I get that you're giving us a top level figure that doesn't help scrutiny
we need that information so we can scrutinise.
good,
yes.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:10:58
thank you Chair.
supporting Paul and James
Cllr Betty Rhodes - 1:11:04
various comments that have been made round the table today.
forgive me saying this, I was actually looking to see when we got on the table, did we have binoculars
or magnifying glasses, and I will say this in my own authority as well,
and somehow sometimes what I get the view is that what we presented with our working officer documents,
without the narrative, without the objectives, without the targets, without the priorities
that we can actually say well, well done, or if it's below the target, why that's the scrutiny issue, that this is an overview of what we are seeing here, but we haven't got the narrative with no details, I believe we've got officer working documents,
in terms of a performance monitoring and outcomes and
I would like to see, as Paul has just said.
where we've got
the topics here that have been actually identified as priorities, why aren't we getting the performance levels of zoos and reasoning and then we can actually see where the WYCA is going,
there's been a few issues in terms of responses, and I'm sure you chair and Hannah and Kelly have made note of
and I've just written down in terms of I believe that there are issues that we should be getting a report back and not at the next meeting but before yeah
yeah,
when I asked about the quarterly
outcome in some forms levels, why were we getting them,
which would help us tremendously?
Katie replied that yes, they do come round because these are sent to the financial department quarterly.
and I believe I got that right kids because I wrote it down, but if that's the case in the good quarterly to the Finance Department, why aren't we at least getting an overview of what's go in to see?
while we can be satisfied with the targets or whatever within, obviously they're all dependent on budgets, I know that so that's that one, and I'm sure when Katy goes back in the officers we can assume that they're going to dig into that and send you apply to your chair, would you be? let's send out to us
on the the buses.
many many years ago, my husband used to wedded husband used to sit on this committee
and visited various places in terms of bus usage and
quality contracts,
I'm sure you've heard in quality contracts for buses or a big part of the future development of the bus service, the bus users,
I don't think that that's gone far enough in terms of
expecting the quality that people out there really need but and I've put a big button as it does not all on your shoulders because,
the bus services we know
we had a lot of bus drivers leave the service,
and particularly any nationals that wanted to go home.
and then we had bus drivers who went on to haulage because they had better.
incomes to look to in dire times
now
I can tell you where I lived just off the Emlyn in Wakefield,
where we used to have three buses coming down the main outlet from Emlyn into Wakefield, we now have one
one.
as far as our rural areas are concerned, in the south-east of the district and Samantha is part of it, and I know James mentioned that we all have an area out there, which is outside of consideration, of how people get to work and how to get home from work.
the other aspect in terms of usage.
is the reduction has been in bus service itself?
question is that down to a the contract or be the inability to recruit drivers.
we have a situation where, across our district.
and we're trying to get but a car users of the road if we didn't have car users and trying to look to development and opportunities for jobs outside of the city, as everybody is doing.
we wouldn't have people that'd be able to go to work, probably, but they couldn't get home at night
and that even applies to our health service staff.
so, even though we're saying that the bus usage is not up
free as it was proved endemic, what is the ability to do something about that in terms of your contracts and the next question is this.
I think all of us and him, when the the news of late in terms of the green agenda, is disturbing.
I think all of us in terms of the green agenda, what we want, we're actually looking through my own health scrutiny at the impact on people's health through emissions,
and that's actually going to be report is going to go through to the integrated care partnership board. through all the scrutinise as well.
the health agenda is obviously a. as a result of the emissions for the green agenda.
but there is another problem.
the cost of the,
as are the jewel, opportunities and cause of the single in terms of somebody trying to buy one of these cars now and the impact of the cost of living.
is pushing it back, it's pushing it back
and we need to be aware that.
Jane quite rightly pointed out about the charging points and there's still a bit of mystery about them.
in terms of how far can my car, how long will it take like how to recharge assault with that actually said 12 hours,
and then how far will that 12 hours' charge take me,
do we flat on the way?
and likely to do on the Google chair, but he tells you where the next petrol station is, which is amazing, because then you know where you go, is there some mapping across the district, and I know you perhaps discussed this and transport is a sort of mapping that says to somebody well don't worry because within so many miles you have a charger and that would help people you got. It
was apt
good
Brexit PR, I'm afraid the point that Jamie others might use, though frequently out of service,
yes, yes,
yes, yeah, I think we've got right, I've got to say I first thought Sam Bacon and then Alan Russell indicated
to us now,
Mr Sam Bacon - 1:17:55
I fully agree Bartra and
although very good.
Cllr Alun Griffiths - 1:17:59
problem, so I just want to pick up on the points about the the report itself, so, as I mentioned, I am the head of service are responsible
Mr Sam Bacon - 1:18:08
for the report that we're talking about
and one has been produced just unsavoury, but you know absolutely take the Committee's points in terms of,
Cllr Alun Griffiths - 1:18:15
strong and out of focus, the aim of of this particular report today was to try and give the Committee a sense of the process by which the
Mr Sam Bacon - 1:18:22
organisation,
but the the different things that we do to monitor performance to measure performance, so things like say the region, things like the West Yorkshire Plan missions and our internal corporate reporting so
the bits that are particularly very small writing and I completely agree that they are I've lost my glasses so I'm I'm struggling unfortunately, but,
that they are bits from our internal documents, the the the the the small writing bit, but that was to try and show them that the kind of BA and lift the lid a little bit and on this is the some of the background that we use,
and these these are. Some of the KPI is that there
and enter draw through some of the the kind of main overviews of how we're doing different bit. So it was more a kind of process document, this one and but absolutely hear the Committee's kind of desire for a bit more narrative next time and will make sure that it it may mean we after the pages are longer, because we, we, we, we zoom, in basically said that in writing, you are quite similar, we've got not quite a small but yeah, basically as as a document like say, that's I'm responsible for that, so I will pick up those points. As until the other points out of 1
comma 3
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:19:29
thank you, and I I think that Councillor Rogers, when you you refer back to cases, comes earlier where she was talking about, was the finance resources and corporate committee, which is a public committee
Alan Reiss - 1:19:37
chaired by the Mayor, so that and one of the papers as appendix to within the within the package, the paper that went to FCC in June.
We recognise that there are improvements that we need to make to this. Absolutely, and
so we've recently reformed the way that we are doing our internal reporting and that will then translate into our external reporting. So next time the Committee sees this, it will look different and will take on board the feedback that you've given to us today.
If I could pick up some of the other points, please turn on bus and the existence of services.
40 years ago, the bus market was deregulated. They're taking steps next week in Greg this weekend in Greater Manchester to introduce bus franchising next week at the at the Combined Authority. Members of the CA are going to be asked to be given the go-ahead for a public consultation into how buses should be run across the region,
and that follows an assessment into the options for how buses are run. That assessment, there's there's quite a statutory process to go through. The assessment has been through an independent audit process and that has concluded that franchising is the preferred option, subject to a public consultation and and bus franchising, would
give
the combined authority control over the routes, frequency, fares and overall standards, and talks about standards of the region's buses and contract bus operators to run these. On its behalf,
the assessment stated that franchising would offer clear strategic benefits by helping the Combined Authority to achieve its ambitions for an integrated transport system which is more affordable, convenient and greener, improving connectivity and getting people where they need to go.
But it's important to to note that you know this is the this. This is all subject to
a great subject to the Combined Authority agreeing to go to public consultation and the results of that process, and then there is a decision that the Mayor would take on the future of the region's bus services next spring.
priority for buses and on hopefully will be feeding into that that
Cllr Alun Griffiths - 1:21:49
process or see what they've done in Manchester, and I'm aware of what my colleague Councillor Rose, talking about Councillor quality partnerships. Firstly, the huge variability per se, but between the services and employment conditions, terms and satisfaction rates between providers. I'm not gonna name and shame business, but
there are some providers who seemed to be able to retain and develop staff and deliver better services than others,
and there's a couple of them that have been on the market to be offloaded by their parent companies for some time. I don't know where we've got to with that, but ownership and control 1 maybe ending up leading to the other, but I want to talk about the impact of the unreliability of the bus services on people's wellbeing, because I work in a mental health charity and in order to access much of the support that many of the people by work with is they need to be
coaxed out.
lockdown still left a long legacy on many people's confidence, moving about and accessing things and to have had it this morning because I did a trip down to. to to Beeston this morning to my work coach group, before I came in here, to drop some equipment often come back, so I've got one of the mayor's fare bus tickets, and then I'm off to James Ward after this I had that incredible Leeds thing of the disappearing bus that was 5 4 3 2 gone.
and if you out of your house for the first time in ages to go to a support group to help address your wellbeing and you've decided you'll take a bus to go three or four miles to a place, you haven't been
Cllr Alun Griffiths - 1:23:15
before to meet people who haven't met before to begin to engage in some support and that happens.
that's a real problem for a lot of people, and then there's my constituents in Wibsey, which is quite close to the reality for profit, is a lot of the jobs. I want people in my ward to get Wellbeing Leeds because Leeds has got a lot of land that is being regenerated. I remember Paul's ward when it was industrial dereliction. It's now heaving with with new developments and the yeah everything south of the station, but if you are a 20 year old young person and you get a job in that area at the bottom of the Amazon in Leeds and you need to be at work for 7 30 in the morning and you don't have a car,
there is no way can't get there, there isn't of us. There's no way of doing it unless you can afford a taxi, so we're constraining people's economic
potential and were also constraining their wellbeing potential by both the lack of the scale of the network, but one of the fundamental problems in Leeds I experienced myself, but also in other areas, is the reliability, but that does tend to fall by Deloitte by, provider, but I want that fed him because, being able to access all the things in various, you can't have everything within a two mile radius of people's homes, you've got to be able to support people moving around it's important for their wellbeing. particularly as people when they're rehoused, are rarely rehoused near their families now because of the pressure on council, housing and social housing, you know you can't guarantee that if you're rehoused on the waiting list, you'll be in anywhere near your relatives, you'll be in a house that is available and that's it and if you turn it down, of the list,
OK, thank you.
yeah,
Cllr Jane Dowson (Leeds City Council) - 1:25:01
and it is a direct question, How have this tieless is WYCA and its providers of bus services to respond quickly to changing needs, you know if there is a job opportunities or I don't think there's still a bus to the sports to to John Charles from the main road and so on how quickly come how agile is WYCA in conjunction with its providers
tariffs,
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:25:29
sorry, at the moment the vast majority of routes across the region are set by private operators, they're not set by.
so we have some influence through
Alan Reiss - 1:25:43
the Bus Alliance partnership that we currently have got with with the operators we have some influence and we fund as well a number of routes which are socially desirable but economically unviable.
however, there is limited money and so difficult choices are made about how what about what routes go in
the my last statement, which is about the launch of the consultation into changing the way that the bus market works in West Yorkshire,
which is gonna, be debated at the Combined Authority next week. probably answers the rest of that question because,
essentially the but bus franchising, and I must stress that no decision has been taken yet and will be taken by the Mayor next spring. But bus franchising would give the Combined Authority control over routes, frequency, fares and overall standards.
OK right, I'm gonna bring that. I concur conclusion, not because I
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:26:40
don't think there's more legs in it to actually continue. It's just shown the wide range of knowledge and experience around the table in terms of trying to move things forward. So can I thank the officers have come forward with that. I've no doubt you'll be getting some sort of note from me with some suggestions in terms of moving things forward and that, but thank you for them go on, OK, if I mean everyone to

10 Assurance Framework

our final item on the agenda today, which is item 10, which is the assurance framework.
Craig, are you introducing this item?
I am doing. Thank you, Chair yeah,
he flipped to go ahead. OK,
if I just start in a little bit of background, and then I'll go on to
Craig Taylor - 1:27:24
the sort of proposed amendment amendments that we're making for the assurance framework. So assurance frameworks requirement of government is hopefully you will all know,
due to devolve powers that we haven't got as one Combined Authority and to devolve the funding and funding decisions to until West Yorkshire Combined Authority
and the assurance framework has got to comply with national guidance that the government set out and that determines very much how the insurance framework works.
His purpose is to give assurance that decisions over funded projects are proper, transparent, deliver value for money but also, probably more importantly, deliver our outcomes and priorities as a as an organisation
Craig Taylor - 1:28:12
all projects and programmes come through the assurance framework, and we have a lot that we've come through, I think there are over 500 projects that have come through the assurance framework now.
one of the requirements we also have is we've got to review it annually
and we do that every year, obviously every year we've got in 2023 and I think Corporate Scrutiny were involved in that, I think we came to a Cup Scrutiny meeting in January 2023 and it was published in February 2023, the next one up is February 24th on the 28th of February, you have no idea whether the 28th February date came from but that's when it's published every year
last time it was approved into his 23
combined authority, and governance and audit were part of that review, and also the LEP were part of that review, asked us to do a peer review of the whole assurance framework.
and the purpose of this report is to update on that peer review that we were asked to do
and whatever comes out of the upper review will go into the February 2024 version of the assurance framework.
so the report sets out the process that we went through and I won't go through that in detail, hopefully, members of the committee have read how we've done that.
the review has been slightly delayed in that we've had an organisational review and it's been
implementation of a strategic portfolio office that I'm the head of service for now.
so the consequences of that have had consequences on the insurance framework as well, so we've had to slightly review it in in in accordance with that as well,
so poster today, so give
yourselves some an opportunity to input into that review. so hopefully we can do that today
and then going forward the 24 2024 version of the assurance framework, when it's amended, will go to the Combined Authority early in 2024 for their approval.
But you that also go to the Governance and Audit Committee
and I think Corporate Scrutiny again stripped Corporate Scrutiny Committee. Again we used to go to the LEP, but now, because of the LEP changes that have happened, and that's probably not going to be the case for the 12th 2024, so the main changes that we are proposing and there are a lot of chasing changes, and these are just the key changes that are listed in the report, but if I could go through each of them,
there is the implementation of the strategic portfolio office so that strengthens our capabilities and
controls about the projects that we do and the outputs and benefits that they deliver, so we can monitor and report on those.
one thing that's been very successful for us for people, understanding the assurance framework is
training sessions on business cases, and we've done that and we've also done
question and answer sessions, I think you are frequently asked questions sessions and they've worked really well.
around all sorts of things, committee structures, evaluation, appraisal, specification reports, business cases, etc etc and we're going to keep doing that and and him. probably do some on fact sheets one-page guides for people as well, so they can understand it well.
we've also, at the moment, are discussing revising governance arrangements and delegations,
and we're talking about at the moment investment Board and an investment priority board at the moment.
which is of will which will be officer, led to make her deceased.
to make recommendations to the decision makers on the projects and programmes that we undertake as a Combined Authority.
the more
things that we really have
that we can really do at the moment is
a lot of the.
feedback that we had was about proportionality and simplification of the process, that's always been the case, and we've always been aware of that, and we try very hard to make things proportional,
but we
we want to strengthen that proportionality even more based on a risk approach, ie homeseeker, those projects
and what that determines then how they come through the assurance framework we have.
many, for we have many flexibilities already in the assurance framework of how we bring things through, but other things that we're thinking of doing is, we've got business justification Case at the moment, we're thinking of allowing that high value projects to use that then there is a
moment we were talking about an additional simpler business case for projects under 500,000 pounds. that's not very many, but we do have those sort of projects,
so that's a proposal we are reviewing all of our templates to make them simplify, to simplify them, that includes the guidance around them as well.
around repetition of of length, language and questions and so forth.
we were very much transport orientated as a Combined Authority when we first started as a Combined Authority, that's changed very much since it became a Mayoral Combined Authority, there's a lot more non transport type projects that come through the assurance framework now, so we're already looking at making the business cases simpler for non transport than they are for transport transport are some very complicated.
economic case requirements and modelling requirements and so forth that non transport schemes don't have, so we're wanting to make that simpler for non transport schemes.
part of the economic appraisal. There's something called an appraisal specification report. That's required to outline how they're going to make that economic appraisal again, not very different between non transport and transport. So we're wanting to make changes to that,
and another one is that to make this process even simpler is to do. We want to move more towards programme level business cases for the funding programmes that we do, and then from those programme business cases projects schemes will drop for drop out from that and they won't have to go through the whole process. They can drop straight into either a strategic outline case or an outline business case or possibly a business certification case
we are continuing to work with our partners to make the process
for as simple as possible and as proportionate as possible, and will continue to do that, even whilst we're discussing the 2024 changes, and now I think the last one that I will just mention is that, we have a an, IT system called the pot for management system, which we fondly called PINS, not the alcoholic drink,
and
we want to really make sure that people use that in a much better way, we cost a lot of things at data-driven, the discussion that we've just been having, there's a lot of data-driven stuff out there, we want to make sure that people use that properly and we've got the most up-to-date.
information in that system, so we can report or monitor the projects and programmes to
committees, but also internally as well.
and I think that's probably everything from me,
how many gave him a briefing, I asked
the question what elected member involvement there had been in the revision.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:35:37
and I was advised that there had been no workshop, work done with elected members, but a survey had been sent to all would take out the word here, but they were sent to a Combined Authority committee members, now I know why I didn't get one back because I'm new did any of the longstanding members. get a copy of this, because the reason being there were only three returns,
there was six, actually I mean six things which I think the greatest Boris Gates. There were six
returns in terms of elected member involvement. No to the question I was asking what elected Mayor involvement there had been to move things forward. So does anybody recollect getting one of these questionnaires
no, but I think that's all we need to do. We need to look at how we can get better elected member involvement in moving this forward, and that is not to criticise what you've done. By the way, maybe just I was asking the question
what, rather than it being officer led, or somebody else led what involvement and what responsibility. The elected members on the Combined Authority were taking were effectively signing this off, so that's fine, that's not clarified, so anybody getting Craig and Councillor Ray to open the batting
yeah, thanking the most of what you you've outlined seems eminently
Cllr Betty Rhodes - 1:36:59
sensible at what kind of level of integration conversations are happening with the insurances in individual authorities, because obviously it's WYCA, there'll be stuff across the piece, but up to that will have impact on the other projects in other parts of the of the Combined Authority. So I appreciate obviously transportable things, probably very high level, conversations with the relevant all highways authorities, but varying emergency said you moving into different areas, what conversations have been had with the counterparts in a more local level around, they could show their assurance models and frameworks are very similar to WYCA's. Bearing in mind some of those decisions will be cross cutting into their areas
Craig Taylor - 1:37:44
it's probably a piece of work that we do need to go further into, but I am not aware of
any assurance processes in local authorities that are similar to ours, I'm not aware of any assurance processes within local authorities not used,
I've worked for Kirklees and also worked for Leeds as well.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:38:03
there is no, there may be some assurance processes, but there's nothing based around the the ATM tragedy business case process for
Craig Taylor - 1:38:10
projects coming through,
but it is, it is some work that we need to do to to work out exactly what it will reach you I do have to clarify
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:38:21
well just to build on what Craig said, so one of the reasons that the that we have this at Combined Authority level is because it's a
Alan Reiss - 1:38:26
condition of the funding that we get from central government, so the rules around funding of the combined authority and the various funding streams that we get, which there's a patchwork and are different from the rules that govern the funding within local authorities, so there are some differences,
I think it's worked, but you know, Craig, saying we do work very closely with the local authorities and all that, so all of the schemes that were the are approved through the through the Combined Authority assurance framework, particularly to do with transport, are delivered in partnership with the local authorities and but they do have different assurance regimes.
Cllr Betty Rhodes - 1:39:04
yet when we are completely sad because of the complexity of the requirements from from from government. I suppose the question is yeah, the iPad, the idea of the combined force that will tie things up and make sure I remember a heavily integrated region to a greater or lesser extent, and I think we've raised this previously about conversations around about. Actually you know, how do we make sure I get just going on to collect data transparently, so that the way one Council does one thing in their patches and suddenly change, which designers is like cost conversations and I'm not saying it's not, but particularly bearing in mind the the the realms of housing health, particularly the combined authority, goes down an enhanced partnership. It'll have an even bigger footprint. In terms of its impact on local council areas,
it would be out, I would suggest, prudent that those that for one conversation start happening because, particularly if an enhanced deal is achieved, the authority is made. Raven says it is a
ambition the impact of the local authority on local decision making and some of those local partnerships down to the health level, for example, depending on the type of enhanced deal they fought to get are going to be quite considerable, and the local authorities are already already have their own assurance and decision-making systems that go into that. You'll have all a whole series of your assurance model, your assurance system, the local foreign system or multiple different partnerships having to respond to the local authority's assurance system and to WYCA's assurance system and a huge amount of bureaucracy and complexity that spews out because of that, which will then slow down some of those key decisions that need to be made, because everybody's fighting over which bureaucracy they have to follow
Alan Reiss - 1:40:53
so I will attempt to stick to stated Combined Authority policy and Councillors comments
so.
so Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have done a deal with government for for deeper devolution, which includes a single settlement, so the idea being that their funding streams are all wrapped up in one and the rules are different, we don't have that at the moment, so we have a range of different funding streams.
38 million pounds a year gainshare which, for 30 years, which is generally on ring-fenced. We have the situation. Sustainable transport fund, the transforming cities fund, the UK shared prosperity fund, et cetera, and it all have slightly different rules
and different ring fences around them in different timescales that we need to spend them in and so on, and so simplification of the funding landscape and what the recoup reporting requirements are, is one of the ambitions that the mayor and the Combined Authority have for any future deal. If there was one with government
Cllr Paul Wray - 1:41:54
just supporting what Paula said, I chaired the Health Committee and I have to have partnerships across the trusts or trust around and when scrutiny was set-up.
you know there was.
a shock that went through the health trusts, because our democracy has set out the path.
and I now worked in the health service for 20 years and it was a shock to the systems of accountability, so you know.
I think the picture has got through to him and after many, many years, but anyway, coming back on on the Chair, on the issues of the the assurance framework and the projects, et cetera.
general question in terms of the schemes and projects, and bearing in mind some difficulties up and down the country that other authorities are having.
is there any risk adverse projects
that you are aware of?
and have you had to in terms of the budget when you have to have a vision and a plan to apply, and have you had to prioritise within the within WYCA to accommodate getting projects done?
yes, so
Alan Reiss - 1:43:15
I haven't got it immediately to hand, but there was a report that came to.
the Combined Authority,
and first, I think, Transport Committee in recent months, which was about cost inflation and how we were managing cost inflation, particularly on the Transport Fund, so that the West Yorkshire and York transport fund which was agreed in something about 2014,
there were a number of schemes in there where costs have gone up and so decisions have had to be taken to how about how to manage that inflation. So the the short answer is yes, there have been net needs to be some decisions taken around
timescales around value engineering
around
pipeline in particular schemes. I am delaying the delaying the delivery of them, and
So and man managing inflation and cost changes is these are, or are, and particularly over the last couple of years, while inflation has been higher,
has been a constant
issue for us and is also worth saying, as I'm sure colleagues are aware, that the real inflation on the types of projects that the Combined Authority is delivering is higher than the standard inflation rate because of cost of materials cost of labour supply chain et cetera and so there are, there are a number of challenges there that we're actively actively managing.
it is very quick
Craig Taylor - 1:44:42
questionnaire out this document itself hasn't really discount to a lot about planning, but I'm on Planning Committee myself so some of the controversial issues we're still dealing with.
effectively, the onshore wind the ban, the dabbling outdoors and all that and plus the watercourse, so there's so much going on there and how we were going to develop the brownfield development as we have already
hit a brick wall almost now, how are we going to be able to put all that into this one document to make sure that we actually we'll be coming up with a more localised, suitable document for West Yorkshire like your localisation how we are going to be dealing with a new national planning policy coming?
sorry.
volunteer.
Craig Taylor - 1:45:37
I would say it probably is not fully the responsibility of the
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:45:41
assurance framework to deal with those issues, we actually very much
Craig Taylor - 1:45:45
like to know about those issues when business cases are put forward through to us about how they are dealing with those sort of issues, but that's I would say that is not the responsibility of insurance framework to do that that's a wider
that's a wider remit of the combined authority and the local County Local Councils that we
the work with.
yet everyday other questions.
if the as above this is relatively topical that topical Vlatko plate does the assurance framework,
taking into consideration
Cllr Betty Rhodes - 1:46:18
national government instability in terms of its changing its mind every five minutes and therefore the associated risks, and particularly bearing in mind we are again in the environment we are read.
there is instability in terms of what national government wants constantly, how is that risk assessed and put into ensure these the assurance process?
okay right,
Alan Reiss - 1:46:48
unless we get it right, so
I mean the it ha, I knew you could do answer it, but again this comes
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:46:55
down to the fact that if we had an elected member, yet they could give you the response back again, Alan has to be very careful there is new on, please cannot be misinterpreted by anyone friend or foe.
Alan Reiss - 1:47:16
so so so yeah, so the approach, the approach that the mayor and the
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:47:20
five leaders have are one and the other members of the Combined Authority have taken is to agree a set of strategic documents, starting with the West Yorkshire Plan, the West Yorkshire investment
Alan Reiss - 1:47:29
strategy and so on, which set out what we want to try and achieve as a region and then, as the funding comes from a variety of different places, including central government, we can then fit that funding to what we what we want to do. So it is that there is a process of partially the region kind of setting its own destiny and saying this is what we want to do and at the same time as needing to meet the requirements that are set by particular funding streams. So government might come along and say we want you to spend money on social housing, decarbonisation,
while that might well be something that we've that the mayor and the five leaders and the other members of the Combined Authority have decided is something that they want to do anyway, so you know it fits in nicely just occasionally,
government of any particular stripe, might decide that they want to give us money for something that we weren't otherwise going to do, in which case we may well just we may well deliver it,
the UK.
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:48:37
or
Craig Taylor - 1:49:12
no, the process that we usually go through as it comes through a
Craig Taylor - 1:49:19
governance and audit Corporate Scrutiny and the Combined Authority before it is approved for the
2024 version.
thank you very much for your.

11 Date of the next meeting - 24 November 2023

thank you very much for coming along here today and presenting it to
Cllr Barry Anderson - 1:49:33
us, so that just leaves one other item, the date and time of the next meeting, which is the 24th of November, so hopefully you've all phoned.
the agenda, stimulating and giving you something to think about
whether in terms of Wi-Fi, or even how we can work better together
with the outcome in respect of authorities, because it's fine sitting here pointing the finger at wake-up, but sometimes it's our own local authorities that need to reflect on the way that they are the they are impacting and delivering to give you some of the statistics that you need for a start, because in Leeds, for example, we've got a massive database that holds information on just about anything and everything going so we populate that you can probably use that as part of your research as well, so we've got to get our data right.
in terms of giving you the information so that you can respond to the needs of our people, so thank you very much for coming along, thank you, thank you.