Agenda item

The Leader of the Opposition, Councillor Sykes, raised the following questions:

 

1.       Talk Talk Cyber Attack

“The Leader will be aware of the cyber-attack conducted on 21^st October against one of Britain’s biggest internet service providers, Talk Talk.

As a consequence of this attack, a significant amount of individual customer data was stolen, including bank account numbers, sort codes, credit and debit card details, dates of birth and the names, email addresses and phone numbers of customers.

To their credit, according to a spokesperson from the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit: "TalkTalk have done everything right in bringing this matter to our attention as soon as possible,” and they are co-operating fully with an ongoing criminal investigation, which has now led to an arrest.

Nonetheless this news will still be very worrying for our residents who pay their bills with the Council electronically on-line or who choose to pay via a debit or credit card.

What information can the Leader provide us about the impact, if any, of the Talk Talk attack on the Council’s operations and its customers – the residents of this borough – and what reassurance can he provide them that the Council has the most rigorous safeguards in place to keep the personal and payment details of our residents safe from prying eyes?”

 

Councillor McMahon, Leader of the Council, responded that he would consult with officers and provide a written response. The Council had secure servers and, when it took payments, those details were encrypted to make sure they could not be viewed. Cyber terrorists would try to circumnavigate the system on a regular basis so it was kept under constant review. The Council was aware of breaches such as Talk Talk and the government breaches and had learned from them, particularly as a public agency that took payments.

 

2.       Conservative threat to Generation Oldham

 

“My second question concerns a clear and present danger to a plan that has enjoyed cross-party support in this Chamber – namely the proposal to generate our own green energy through the Generation Oldham project.

The Leader may be aware that the new Tory Government has recently proposed changes that will make it difficult if not impossible to continue to develop community owned renewable energy schemes.

When the Liberal Democrats controlled the Department of Energy and Climate Change whilst in coalition, a favourable regime was put in place to provide a generous subsidy by the payment of a Feed in Tariff (or FIT) to community energy projects.

As a result over 5,500 community energy projects were established over the lifetime of the Coalition Government – making a major contribution to our country’s energy needs without creating a carbon footprint.

The new Government intends to unravel this regime by cutting the FIT by up to 90% in January 2016. Under their proposals FIT payments to roof mounted solar schemes will be reduced from 12.47p for every kilowatt hour of electricity they produce to 1.63p.

I have recently responded – as I am sure many others have - to the Government consultation on this matter opposing the changes but I have no doubt they will still go ahead.

Given that this Council’s Generation Oldham proposals are based on the generation by roof mounted solar panels of 1 megawatt of electricity, can the Leader please tell me whether these proposals would make this scheme unviable and whether any solar panels can be installed before January to enable us to claim the existing subsidy and salvage what we can from this Conservative inspired train wreck?”

 

Councillor McMahon, Leader of the Council, responded that the Generation Oldham project had been in development for a number of years. The Council had reached a stage where it was happy with the way forward and had agreed the report, which was based on a subsidy coming back to make it financially viable. The capital investment required to install the equipment was substantial and would have to be repaid, and the subsidy would be needed to ensure Oldham and community groups got the benefit. Oldham had a good track record, with the Saddleworth Community Hydro Scheme in place. People had bought shares in it and the Council had supported it. The Generation Oldham scheme was about making the benefits available for everyone in Oldham. If the Government did not believe in social housing or renewable energy, but presented it to the public as it if were a give-away. They said to people they were removing the green tax and giving them money back, but that money was used to pay for renewables that, over the long term, would have made energy cheaper for them. They presented it as a give-away. The Leader could not say with confidence that Generation Oldham would be delivered on the scale that the Council’s ambition would have wanted, but he could say that the determination to produce something good at the end of it was still there.

He would ask Councillor Jabbar to circulate an updated note on Generation Oldham as a result of the change in subsidy.

 

A Leader of a minority Opposition group, Councillor Sheldon, raised the following question:

 

“It is good news that the railway line from Manchester Victoria to Huddersfield is soon going to see electrification. There is an impact due to the closure of the main road between Saddleworth and Huddersfield for up to six months, which would have serious repercussions for residents and businesses. There is no close diversionary route in that traffic would have to go either through Mossley or through Delph to get from Oldham to Uppermill. Can all the Saddleworth Councillors be brought on board very soon to discuss this major problem so that there could be ideas in place before the electrification took place to alleviate the problem?”

 

Councillor McMahon, Leader of the Council, responded that a detailed answer would be sent in writing and this was effectively a ward issue.

 

The Mayor reminded the meeting that Council had agreed that, following the Leaders’ allocated questions, questions would be taken in an order that reflected the political balance of the Council.

 

Members raised the following questions:

 

1.       Councillor Roberts to Councillor Hibbert

 

“Can the relevant Cabinet Member tell us what the potential impact will be in Oldham of the Conservative Government's proposed housing policies in extending the right to buy to Housing Association tenants and forcing Councils to sell off higher value properties?”

 

Councillor Hibbert, Cabinet Member for Housing, Planning and Highways, responded that there potential problems as well as existing ones that were quite substantial. Right to Buy had already had a major impact on the supply of family housing for social rent in the Borough. In the last past 5 years alone, 179 former Council home tenants had exercised the Right to Buy, with 109 of these in the last 2 years. This stemmed from the Government’s policy of increasing the level of Right to Buy discounts.

Whilst extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants had been presented by the Government as a means to open access to home ownership, it caused a number of problems in terms of impact on individuals. Many people did not always appreciate the financial challenges in terms of maintaining and managing their homes. This had been seen on the Crossley estate, where properties remaining with the Housing Association had benefitted from improvement that private owners had not been able to afford.  The Council would not support anything which encouraged people into debt and put them at risk of repossession. When many right to buy properties were subsequently sold on, they often ended up in the private rented sector which could lead to a lack of maintenance and a range of neighbourhood management problems. The Cabinet Member was not suggesting that every private landlord was irresponsible, but too many of them were.

Right to buy also impacted greatly on the supply of affordable family homes for rent across the borough. It was clear from recent years that the cost of replacing the homes lost under Right to Buy had never been met by the Government. This proposal would put further pressure on Oldham’s housing associations’ finances.

Former Council tenants who were housed by First Choice Homes in their 12,000 properties already had what was called the ‘preserved right to buy’, and these new changes would affect housing association tenants in around a further 10,000 other homes across the Borough.

In relation to the selling of high value Council Homes to fund replacements, he did not believe the Government had thought through the implications. This proposal appeared part of a drive to push home ownership at the expense of councils and those who need affordable homes for rent. This could in theory impact on around 300 new-build family council homes, which were recently built through the Gateways to Oldham scheme. None of these met the suggested definition of ‘high value’, however the Government may set a target for the Council to sell properties. He was asking the Government to exempt the sale of recently-built homes as the cost of replacing them would not be viable.

This policy might work on the south-east of England, where properties could be sold for many times the cost of rebuild, but it did not apply in Oldham and the north. The policy was dangerous and threatened the quality of life of many people across the north of England. It was disgraceful and the Council should be doing everything possible to fight this ill thought-outand southern-centric policy.

 

2.       Councillor Haque to Councillor Akhtar

 

“Oldham is rightly proud of the record of Oldham Sixth form College, but recent research by the Sixth Form Colleges Association has painted a worrying picture about the future - can the relevant Cabinet member comment on what this means for Oldham?”

 

Councillor Akhtar, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, responded that the Sixth Form Colleges Association had published its 2015 funding impact survey report recently, outlining a number of significant funding pressures on sixth form colleges across England. The report commented that “The 93 Sixth Form Colleges in England are an education success story. They outperform school and academy sixth forms while educating more disadvantaged students and receiving less funding. However, this year’s funding impact survey shows that the sector has reached the point where it cannot absorb any further reductions”.

The Sixth Form College sector as a whole had faced a number of funding cuts over the last few years and 16-18 funding was not protected by the Government. Coupled with the fact that colleges had to pay VAT whilst schools and academies did not, and the scale of the funding position faced by the sector was clear.

Oldham Sixth Form College had faced and continued to face these challenges but remained very strong, having handled the cuts effectively over the last few years. They had sustained strong outcomes, including AS level results this summer which placed the college in the top 10% nationally in terms of progress made against expected outcomes.

As a result of carefully managed changes year on year, the College continued to have an 'outstanding' rating in terms of financial health. This was not to say the future would not be challenging, given the lack of protection and potential for further cuts but he believed Councillors could continue to have confidence in the College's current and future position.

 

3.       Councillor Malik to Councillor Harrison

 

“There has been a lot of news about the success of Adoption and Fostering Services in Oldham. Can the Cabinet Member for Social Care and Safeguarding bring us up to date on any recent developments?”

 

Councillor Harrison, Cabinet Member for Social Care and Safeguarding responded that, in the recent SIF inspection it was noted that both our Adoption and Fostering services were rated good and had shown significant improvement. Within fostering capacity had been created in our mainstream carers, in essence to meet the increased demand for the service, and as a consequence of staying put legislation, where young people had the option of staying put longer with foster parents. The foster care offer had been developed to deal with more complex cases, particularly those young people in need of therapeutic support. Similarly the Council had concentrated on recruiting carers for teenagers to enable the reduction of the number of residential placements and to improve outcomes for young people at a crucial stage in their lives. A fairly recent development had been the setting up of the West Pennine Regional Adoption Agency, part of a nationwide initiative to bring authorities together to share expertise. Oldham were part of a very successful bid that was confident it could lead to more timely and better matches for children across the region in the adoption process.

There was also a joint adoption panel with Rochdale, set up in October. This had an independent chair and adoption panels now met every two weeks. This would help improve timeliness of adopter approvals and children’s matches with their prospective adoptive families.

The adoption support fund had been fully operational since May 2015. This was to provide therapeutic support for families who may need it, after an adoption order. Oldham had made successful applications to the fund for therapeutic support for 6 adoptive families, with more on the way. All eligible families had been contacted to advise them of the fund. 

There had been Government help with increasing fees for harder to place children and young people, such as older children, sibling groups, children from BME backgrounds and those with special needs.

Over all, the people in this Service were to be congratulated

 

4.       Councillor Harkness to Councillor Akhtar

 

“Many children from the poorer households in this borough come to school hungry. It is well known that a hungry child will have great difficulty concentrating in lessons and so their learning will suffer. Such children would benefit enormously from having access on their arrival at school to a Breakfast Club providing nutritious food free or for a nominal sum.The Liberal Democrat Group has recently conducted a survey of schools to identify which run Breakfast Clubs. This did reveal some additional clubs that were not already recorded in the Council’s database and I will be very happy to share the question set and the data received with the Cabinet Member.However, many schools did not respond to the survey so the picture is far from complete. Can I therefore please ask the Cabinet Member if he will be willing to commission an official Council survey of schools so we can gain a greater understanding of the available provision at this time?”

 

Councillor Akhtar, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, responded that the short answer was “yes”.

5.       Councillor Fielding to Councillor Haque

“The introduction of individual electoral registration is predicted to lead to the loss of thousands of eligible voters from electoral registers.
What is the Council doing to raise awareness of this change and ensure that nobody in Oldham loses their right to vote?”

Councillor Haque, Deputy Cabinet Member for Performance and Corporate Governance, responded that  additional staff resources funded from central government were being used to concentrate on the task of reducing the unconfirmed (red) electors, together with colleagues from canvassers and the neighbourhood teams making personal weekend visits to non responding properties in the lowest responding areas.Work was still ongoing in this area.

These electors had two letters sent out separately to them and one hand delivered by canvassers requesting a response on top of the usual canvass activity.

To date every household had received a Household Enquiry Form followed by a reminder and a second reminder when necessary. The personal canvass was underway and would run until mid November.

The communication plan had used twitter and facebook messaging which had been ongoing throughout the canvass and an extra push had gone out on facebook recently.

Staff had been encouraged through team briefs and posters throughout the workplace.

Personal calls had been made to build up better relationships with nursing homes and their managers, this would be ongoing.

Licensing of Private Landlords had been used to write out to them requesting information about tenants and movements.

 

6.       Councillor Shuttleworth to Councillor Hibbert

“An article in The Times on 19 October has a comment from Oliver Colville MP, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the private rented sector, and I quote: ““The government needs to explain why so much taxpayers’ money is going to rogue landlords without proper accountability.”

He called for action to end the blight of filthy and dangerous accommodation.

May I therefore ask the relevant Cabinet member to advise:

1.       The current situation in relation to the Selective Licensing Scheme

2.       How many private landlords have indicated their willingness to join the scheme

3.       The number of known private landlords in the Borough

How many private landlords, if any, have been prosecuted for providing unfit homes during the last 5 years”

Councillor Hibbert, Cabinet Member for Housing, Planning and Highways, responded that he had also read the article and noted the comments on the private rented sector. To date, the team had received 596 applications for a license from the 5 neighbourhoods that were currently designated. Of these applications 67 properties had now been licensed after providing the relevant documentation and complying with the conditions, with another 104 to be issued with a licence by the end of November.

Officers were currently processing the details of 30 private landlords who had failed to apply for a licence from the initial neighbourhood of St. Marys and these details would be processed with the intention to prosecute.

Across the 5 neighbourhoods that were designated, the Council had received 596 applications. Further applications were expected as a number of landlords were waiting for the approval of the instalment option which was now in place.

This figure was unknown but what could be said was that, within the neighbourhoods covered by Selective Licensing, 38% of the housing stock was privately rented. It was also known from research that over 80% of landlords with properties in the Borough own only one property.

5 landlords had been prosecuted by the team over the last 5 years. In addition to these prosecutions, officers had also served legal notice on landlords to emergency close 15 privately rented properties due to their condition and also executed 33 warrants issued by the Magistrates Courts to ensure standards are maintained.

The Council was now at the easier stage of finding landlords, the difficulty would come with those that were not registered, with those that had taken cash in hand payments, with tenants who were terrified of reporting anything about their landlord for fear of eviction. One private landlord had expressed the view that the way he would deal with a troublesome tenant would be to put their property on the pavement and change the lock. That was the standard of landlord the Council was determined to protect the people of Oldham from and to fight against to achieve what the Council wanted – good responsible, safe, secure, healthy properties in Oldham for people to live in, with no fear of insecurity in the future.   

 

7.       Councillor Garry to Councillor Akhtar

 

“Apprenticeships are an excellent route in to skilled employment for young people. Can the relevant cabinet member advise how many people have been supported in to apprenticeships by the Get Oldham Working Scheme?”

 

Councillor Akhtar, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, responded that the Get Oldham Working campaign had supported 286 citizens into Apprenticeships across a wide range of areas and increasingly into higher levels (advanced and higher). The Council had achieved a 97 percent achievement rate, which was exceptional and 86% progress directly into employment at point of leaving the scheme.

The Council had increased its commitment to apprenticeships from 10 a year to over 50 a year and was confident it would be exceeding the Government Apprenticeship Levy target.

 

8.       Councillor Williamson to Councillor Harrison

 

“Children that are looked after by the local authority are required to leave their accommodation if they reside in a Children’s Home when they reach the age of 18; yet they can remain in-situ within a foster care placement until they become 21.

Given that the local authority retains a duty of care to children that are looked after until they become 21, please can the Cabinet Member outline for me what ongoing support is currently provided by the Council once they become an adult and leave a Children’s Home?”

 

Councillor Harrison, Cabinet Member for Social Care and Safeguarding responded that, in response to the question posed, young people could remain in Foster Care Post 18 in the initiative of ‘Staying Put’, which was reviewed every 6 months to discuss if this was still an appropriate decision until the age of 21 years.

Oldham went the extra mile. Children’s Homes were regulated by Statutory Guidance that did not allow this extension. However Oldham was unique and provided 2 high quality Semi Independence Units. Most children left residential care in Oldham and moved to a semi-independent unit, and could stay up to 21.  These were staffed 24 hours a day and allowed young people to develop their skills, independence and maturity to take on another step towards independence and their own tenancy in the future. They provided a safety net and built relationships for the Workers to then continue when they moved on further.

Following this period, Oldham had 13 taster flats for Post 18 year olds that had been in care, and developed skills in semi independence but still needed another period of support. These were self-contained flats, where staff from the Service visited on a nightly basis in order to provide and offer support. This provided an alternative or compliment for young people’s development to independence, and prompted confidence, and was again a safety net that Parent’s would provide. Oldham was being a good ongoing corporate parent.

The Social Worker in the service supported young people who were Care Leavers until 21 years, and Post 21 until 25 years if in Higher Education/Apprenticeship/Traineeship. It was over a period of time, advice, support and guidance that young people could be encouraged to aspire and succeed and attend University. This longer term would support individual autonomy and the increased independence and resilience of dealing with situations and life.

 

At this point in the meeting the Mayor advised that the time limit for this item had expired.

 

RESOLVED that the questions asked and responses provided be noted.