Meetings

I agree with Councillor Shafi Ahmed, when he said during the Standards Advisory Committee tonight, that he prefers in person meetings as people can concentrate better.

This morning I went to a half-half meeting, expertly delivered by THCVS. The room was well equipped but there was no reception for data for those who were not connected to the Wi-Fi system. Personally, I would never connect to a shared Internet connection due to confidentiality of data.

Part of the panel were online, and few people were in the hall in person. Though technically the combination of virtual and in person presence was excellent (with the exception of signal blocking in the room for outside data connection), the in-person attendance had no distractions (apart from tea and biscuits), whilst the online panel had one member who ran two meetings at the same time and also expected a parcel delivery. Another member had a dog barking in the background. The meeting discussed the future of the Police cautions system from next year 2023.

There seems to be a lack of funding for implementing a policy, which expects local service providers to cater for those on Police cautions, who all have to fulfil conditions from next year.

Tower Hamlets has been chosen as a trial borough to implement working with statutory and voluntary bodies to provide care for those on cautions. Cautions will be handled like mini probations.

Conditional cautions are going to change to diversionary cautions

Penalty notices and simple cautions change into community cautions.

All cautions will have conditions attached, as how those cautions have to behave and work with voluntary or statutory bodies.

In Tower Hamlets there were 167 cautions last year and only 10 conditional cautions. From next year all cautions will have conditions. That will increase the admin for every caution in place.

We looked into how Neighbourhood Watch can help with offenders.

It was not clear to me how those cautioned are equipped with communications equipment and how much in person dealings are necessary.

The MOPAC contribution was well delivered remotely. However, the actual policy on how cautions are going to be handled has not been written yet. But I was happy to contribute to the discussion.

Literally working from home or a remote location, you can double and triple meetings or have even more, depending on the amounts of screens you can log onto at the same time.

I don’t think doubling up improves the quality or concentration.

Most Council meetings should be in person as attending and working together in person improves the concentration on the subject. Though tonight’s standard committee meeting lacked preparation and another meeting was cancelled completely. It was said that newly elected councillor’s interest has frittered out now. That is very concerning this attitude and also that members of panels have to be remembered to attend with a note that they ‘have to attend’. One document of the Council committee tonight was completely out of date and could not be used at all.

Overall, a not satisfactory service provision.