a)    Councillor Larcombe will ask the following question of Councillor Werner, Leader and Cabinet member for Community Partnerships, Public Protection and Maidenhead

Four of the five Directors of RBWM Property Company Ltd resigned on 13 February 2024.  Can you please explain the circumstances behind these resignations?

b)    Councillor Gosling will ask the following question of Councillor Reynolds, Cabinet Member for Communities and Leisure

Windsor is one of the UKs best tourist attractions. I believe that our iconic Museum is part of this with an accreditation from The Arts Council. When it charged, it still had a large footfall. Over 1000 people have signed the Museum petitions. What alternative ways are being considered to preserve this attraction for future generations?

c)    Councillor Brar will ask the following question of Councillor Coe, Cabinet Member for Cabinet Member for Household & Regulatory Services

Can I be assured that the Environment Agency and council will engage with Bisham Parish Council and the flood wardens to make sure that any lessons are learnt from the recent flood events on the Thames?

d)    Councillor Price will ask the following question of Councillor Bermange, Cabinet Member for Planning, Legal and Asset Management

A Motion was agreed by Council in September relating to Part II items. When will the periodic review take place regarding historic Part II decisions?

The Council will set aside a period of 30 minutes to deal with councillor questions, which may be extended at the discretion of the Mayor in exceptional circumstances. The councillor who provides the initial response will do so in writing. The written response will be published as a supplement to the agenda by 5pm one working day before the meeting. The questioner shall be allowed up to one minute to put a supplementary question at the meeting. The supplementary question must arise directly out of the reply provided and shall not have the effect of introducing any new subject matter. A councillor responding to a supplementary question will have two minutes to respond.

a)    Councillor Larcombe asked the following question of Councillor Werner, Leader and Cabinet member for Community Partnerships, Public Protection and Maidenhead

Four of the five Directors of RBWM Property Company Ltd resigned on 13 February 2024.  Can you please explain the circumstances behind these resignations?

Written response: In terms of the reasons for these resignations, the decision of the former Chair and the non-exec directors is their own and we thank them for their contribution.  A new interim company board has since been installed.

Regarding the RBWM Property Company more widely, as part of our financial recovery plan we’re looking at all services to determine whether the current delivery model is the right one - that's something we have to do given the pressures facing the council.  It's in this context that we'll be reviewing the Property Company and the services it provides, although no decisions have been taken about future approach.  We've also taken steps more recently to strengthen council oversight of the company, which was needed.

Councillor Larcombe asked how much had the property company had cost the Council. He clarified that he meant that when the property company was set up in 2011 there were expectations as to how it would perform over the years and he wondered whether it had performed in accordance with those expectations.

Councillor Werner replied he had wanted to tackle the scrutiny of the property company when he became Leader and implemented scrutiny changes two levels: as owners of the property company they put in place a shareholder panel but as the Council was also a client they had appointed an officer to act as the main liaison with the property company so it could be scrutinised at that level. At the second shareholders panel they had raised a number of issues with performance and asked for an improvement plan to urgently be put in place. It was the following day that four of the non-executive directors resigned and they have temporarily been replaced with senior officers of the Council while the future of the property company is considered.

b)    Councillor Gosling asked the following question of Councillor Reynolds, Cabinet Member for Communities and Leisure

Windsor is one of the UKs best tourist attractions. I believe that our iconic Museum is part of this with an accreditation from The Arts Council. When it charged, it still had a large footfall. Over 1000 people have signed the Museum petitions. What alternative ways are being considered to preserve this attraction for future generations?

Written response: The official RBWM petition has just over 70 signatures from local residents asking us to keep the museum open. You are correct to say that when the museum charged a small admission fee there was an income generation from the museum. When the decision was made by the previous administration to remove the fee, they failed to remove the income target. Therefore, the museum has always been set up to fail in the eyes of the budget. 

We are committed to keeping a museum service within Windsor, and options for the museum are currently being explored with stakeholders. The Windsor and Royal Borough collection is a vital part of our history, and we want to ensure that residents still have access to our local heritage.

We're also exploring how we can get the museum to different community groups. Since 2020 0 school trips have been booked to the museum, which is disappointing and somewhat different to what's been shared on social media. Therefore, we're exploring whether we can send the museum collection out to schools and care homes so more of our residents can learn about the history of The Borough.

Councillor Gosling stated that as the draft budget was made public in mid-December there had been plenty of time to make initial inquiries as to likely suitable venues in Windsor. She queried where the museum was going to be put if it was moved, what would the costs be and would there be a charge to customers if the museum was rehoused.

Councillor Reynolds responded that was an interesting question regarding charging as the museum used to have a charge but several years ago that fee was removed but the income target was kept. The previous administration required the museum to generate an income and he queried how the previous administration expected to preserve the attraction for future generations when having that negative target. He explained that in this year's budget the previous administration had zero planned for the museum so there was a one year funding settlement agreed for it last year and the previous administration had not planned for anything for it for this year. He continued that they were exploring how we can get the Museum to different Community groups and noted that since 2020 zero school trips had been booked to the museum which was different to what he had read on some social media platforms. He stated that they wanted to make sure that the museum was set up for the future, worked for the residents of Windsor and Maidenhead as it was a borough Museum, and they were committed to keeping the Museum service in Windsor. He concluded that they would see what the outcome was of the review currently taking place.

c)    Councillor Brar asked the following question of Councillor Coe, Cabinet Member for Cabinet Member for Household & Regulatory Services

Can I be assured that the Environment Agency and council will engage with Bisham Parish Council and the flood wardens to make sure that any lessons are learnt from the recent flood events on the Thames?

Written response: The council is working through its debrief process to ensure the lessons are learnt from the recent major flooding incident across the borough.  This includes working with multi-agency partners as well as meeting with all local communities affected by the incident to get feedback on how we can improve our plans and complete our statutory duty to investigate all flooding incidents as the lead local flood authority. The council has provided all impacted Parish Councils the opportunity to feed into the Council’s debrief process through a survey. This has helped to shape immediate learning which can change processes quickly ahead of any new flood events. Meetings with each impacted Parish Council are being organised to collect data for the Section 19 Flood Investigation Report. 3 of these have been completed and the final details of the remaining 3 are being put together.

The council has also secured the support of Environment Agency and Thames Water to meet with Bisham and Cookham Parish Councils to discuss their concerns. We are in the process of finalising the details of that meeting.

Although the formal review has a timetable, we will continue to welcome stakeholder ideas on how we can improve at any time.

Councillor Brar asked as her supplementary question whether Councillor Coe agreed that they could onlysolve flooding issues in Cookham or other parishes, which were liable to flooding, if the national government accepted responsibility for it.

Councillor Coe did agree and stated that it was easy for Cookham, Bisham and also Hurley to get forgotten with all the focus that was put on Datchet, Horton and Wraysbury and Old Windsor which suffered with flooding as well. He continued that the responsibility for the channels around Cookham, which flooded during the recent incident, rest with the Environment Agency and the channels around Cookham are what is known as ‘main Channel’ which are drainage channels which are responsibility of the Environment Agency to maintain or to enforce maintenance. This includes the channel at Cookham Moor which burst its banks and flooded the whole area around the Causeway. He stated that addressing the problems with a river as significant as the Thames and the channels that come off it around Cookham was definitely a matter which is beyond the scale of a small unitary authority to fund. He reflected that national government needed to stop trying to kick the issue down the road, take responsibility for this national issue and infrastructure of such national importance.

d)         Councillor Price asked the following question of Councillor Bermange, Cabinet Member for Planning, Legal and Asset Management

A Motion was agreed by Council in September relating to Part II items. When will the periodic review take place regarding historic Part II decisions?

Written response: The council is fully supportive of a new approach to transparency and this can be clearly seen in the subsequent reduction of information reserved for part 2 discussions to date in the interests of local democracy.  Since last summer, steps have been taken to reduce the number of Part 2 papers over the past year and ensure that more information is covered in Part 1 discussions. I fully supported the Motion agreed by Full Council in July 2023.

Concerning the provision in that Motion to periodically review historic Part 2 Reports and Minutes with a view to publication, this was subject to officer capacity and resource availability.

As was noted in the Report of the Chief Financial Officer at Budget Full Council in February 2024 (Appendix O to the Budget Paper), the Council faces a significant risk in relation to capacity, and in all areas of the Council resource has been reduced to very lean levels. Officers are regularly facing difficult decisions on how to prioritise the resources available and our focus is rightly on delivering the budget recently agreed by Full Council to help reduce the risk of effective bankruptcy.

The periodic review of historic Part 2 Reports and Minutes requires significant officer resource and capacity. This impacts both teams within Law & Governance (Information Governance and Democratic Services) and also the relevant Service Areas responsible for the original reports, especially where there has been a high turnover of staff which necessitates lengthy research into historic issues.

Therefore, at the present time, we are prioritising doing what is required to put the council back on a firmer financial footing and deliver the essential services the borough needs.  As a consequence, there is, unfortunately, no capacity to prioritise the review of historic reports at present. 

However, this does not affect the ability for FOI requests to be made in relation to historic Council Reports, which will be handled through the statutory process.

Councillor Price thanked Councillor Bermange for his response and for spending time with her the previous week to work collaboratively and pragmatically on finding what she believed was an acceptable way forward working with the current limited resources. She asked him to explain further what they had agreed with officers.

Councillor Bermange thanked her for working with him to find this solution to help achieve the aims of the motion and acknowledging the scarce resources available. He had validated the approach with the Monitoring Officer, Democratic Services and the Information Governance Team. As he had noted in the written response the Freedom of Information (FOI) process is an established statutory regime with built-in safeguards, is open to both public and members of the Council and the Council has a duty to comply with this statutory obligation. He explained that the public interest test applied to potentially exempt information was very similar to the test that was applied when determining whether documents needed to be in part two in the first place. He described that when the Freedom of Information team published a former part two report in response to an FOI query they would flag this to Democratic Services team who would add a link to the response on the original meeting agenda page where the restricted report was originally considered. He shared on screen an example of the Alexander Gardens cabinet report from February 2000 which was now available via an FOI query. All members would be made aware that this has happened and the details. He asked that if Councillors were aware of any particular past FOI responses that should be linked to past agendas they should advise him or Democratic Services and these would be retrospectively linked.