The press release about the rent report ran to four paragraphs. The report itself was attached to the cabinet agenda as appendix C, and the story was in a table on page 41 (sample).
I read appendices first now. The agenda tells you what the council wants to talk about; the attachments tell you what it already knows.
If you want to try it, start with the budget papers: find the line that changed most since last year and ask why.