This report sets out the opportunity to realign a number of teams who provide the daily delivery of adult social care services into a single Directorate with full accountability for the quality and cost of the services. This will include transferring about 100 staff from Optalis to the Council. Cabinet are asked to approve the decision and delegate authority to the Lead Member and Executive Director to implement the proposal, including negotiating the required changes in the contractual relationship with Optalis and approving the legal transfer of staff to the Council.

RBWM is a licensing authority under the Gambling Act 2005. Under this Act we
are required to have a policy setting out how we will exercise our functions under
this legislation, in RBWM this is called the RBWM Gambling Act 2005 Statement of
Principles.
The Act requires that, every three years, licensing authorities review and republish
their policy and this is now due.
A consultation on the existing Statement of Principles has been carried out and an
updated and revised version produced. This will be reported to the Licensing Panel
on 15 April and will then need to go to Full Council for adoption as the RBWM
Gambling Act 2005 Statement of Principles 2025 - 2028.

A report giving the outcome of public consultation on proposals for new Special Educational Needs and Disabilities provision in the Royal Borough, and the resulting recommendations on which way we should proceed.

In the NBS (National Bus Strategy), the statutory framework for delivery of the strategy through partnership is provided by the Bus Services Act 2017 and the key document setting out the vision, objectives and delivery plans of LTAs and their partners at the local level is the Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP). Our last published version was 2 years ago and needs refreshing.

To make appointments of council representatives on outside and associated bodies. Each year, the Council appoints a number of representatives to sit on organisations to act as a communication link between the organisation and the council.

Each political group will be given the opportunity to put forward nominations before Cabinet formally confirms the representative for each body.

The report will provide an update on the PM2.5 and PM10 monitoring programme within RBWM.

The report seeks Cabinet approval to revoke the 5 AQMAs within RBWM which
are no longer required as the measured levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are well
below the nationally set, health-based air quality objectives. RBWM can
demonstrate no exceedances in all 5 AQMAs for at least 4 consecutive years.
Provisional results for 2023 indicate continued compliance which will bring the
consecutive years to 5, therefore the council must proceed with the revocation of
all 5 AQMAs.

The Annual Status Report for 2023 including results from 2018 to 2022 can be
found here: https://www.rbwm.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2023-09/eh_air_quality_an
nual_report.pdf. Defra’s appraisal report concluded that: On the basis of the
evidence provided by the local authority the conclusions reached are accepted for
all sources and pollutants. Following the completion of this report, Royal Borough
of Windsor and Maidenhead should progress with the revocation their compliant AQMAs and submit an Annual Status Report in 2024.

Section 83(2)(b) of the Environment Act 1995 allows for the revocation of an
AQMA by an Order, if it appears on review the air quality standards and objectives
are being achieved and are likely throughout the relevant period to be achieved,
within the designated area.

Cabinet to agree RBWM’s Empty Property Strategy. The Empty Property Strategy aims to work with empty homeowners to increase the supply of housing. The strategy will set out the approach RBWM will take to provide a clear direction for addressing empty homes which blight communities and adversely affect neighbourhoods.