Speeches by Green.

“More agile?”

“When you say “recently”, what do you mean by that?”

“Is that almost giving them permission, because they can see that other bodies have gone down a similar route?”

“I am keen to understand what role the Treasury has in the support for smaller bodies. What support do you provide to those smaller bodies? I read in the Report that you make yourselves available if somebody asks you for support, but what does that look like in reverse? How do you make yourselves available, or is that n…”

“You are getting the information that you actually need.”

“Thank you, Chair. I would like to address my question to Indrani and Micon, if I may. What does complying with functional standards and financial reporting requirements look like in practice for your organisations? May I ask you to go first, Indrani?”

“Is that something that the organisations request from you or that you proactively offer? How does that relationship work?”

“That is really helpful—thank you. I know that colleagues have lots of questions, so I will leave it there.”

“Definitely Sarah Green. I have a question for the whole panel. If you could make any changes to the accountability requirements for small bodies, what would they be? What would “good” look like for you?”

“That is very helpful. How about you, Indrani? Is there anything you would change if you could wave a magic wand?”

“How about you, Farhad? You must have lots of different, smaller bodies. What would you change if you could to make life a bit easier?”

“I wanted to ask you a question, Janet, if I may. Are small bodies raising any concerns with you about their ability to comply with functional standards? If they are, what are you doing to address them?”

“May I ask about enforcement? I appreciate that the Environment Agency is not sitting in front of us, but I know there is deep frustration in my constituency. To give one example, there was a major incident in Chalfont St Peter two years ago. Here we are in 2026, and although the Environment Agency has been out to see i…”

“I am keen to better understand what the future looks like and what you anticipate. This question is for the whole panel. You are right that there are four regulators at the moment, coming into one and filling in the gaps. I am keen to understand how you anticipate that improving not just consumer trust but transparency…”

“I want to ask specifically about asset health, because you mentioned the recruitment of a chief engineer. What difference will that make? You already have engineers, so what difference will having somebody as a head honcho make?”

“Could you update the Committee with a note on that? I think that would be valuable, as we all have instances that we could reference.”

“So you are cracking on with that anyway?”

“There are authorities, including mine in Buckinghamshire, that are currently in the process of drafting their local plan while meeting the new housing targets that they have been set. I strongly suspect that the timeframe we are talking about will come after they are required to submit their proposal, so this is a live…”

“To pick up on what Rupert was saying, on the transition period we are talking about, you said the plan would be published in the next couple of months. Do you mean before the King’s Speech? What timeframe are you working to, specifically?”

“You mentioned there was a large number who had been waiting a long time. What is a long time?”