Agenda and minutes

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

To consider recommendations in respect of:

·       Capital Programme 2024/25 - 2026/27

·       Revenue Budget 2024/25

·       Council Tax 2024/25

The Council considered the report by the Executive Director: Resources which set out the financial plans and revenue budgets for the financial year 2024/25. The recommendations had been submitted to the Council by the Executive and covered all planned spending, service developments and expenditure reductions for next year. A separate document presented an overview of the Council’s spending plans for 2024/25 and the Council’s Council Tax Resolution.

Questions of clarification were asked by Councillor Phillip Thompson and Councillor Christoph Eberle.

Councillor C Eberle stated that on page 87 of the report, an additional savings proposal of £186,000 had been put forward. This was to be achieved by reducing the support being given to young people who were disadvantaged by not being in education, training or employment; reducing the support provided to schools which need to improve; and other measures.

These specific savings proposals had only been made public following the end of the consultation period on the draft budget and there were concerns about the possible impact these proposals could all have on vulnerable children and young people without proper consultation.

The report indicated that the specific measures to achieve these savings were still to be determined and that further consultation on the specific implementation of the savings would be conducted with schools 'if required'. In light of this Council's commitment to giving residents a stronger genuine voice in Council business, it was requested that the Executive Member commit to running a full and proper public consultation before the final proposals for implementing the savings be approved.

Councillor Bailey, Executive Member of Children, Young People and Learning responded that this hadn’t been part of the initial proposals but came out of the Safety Valve proposals and discussions. Any opportunities to gain additional funding would be maximised, and full and inclusive consultations would be maintained.

Councillor P Thompson stated that Paragraph 3.6.5 of the report stated that it would be necessary to draw a significant sum from the Council’s accumulated reserves to meet its legal obligation to set a balanced budget. Under recommendation 2.2 it was proposed that £1.509 million be taken from reserves to support revenue expenditure within the next year. Elsewhere the report acknowledges the growing costs of demand-led services and the continued uncertainty over central Government funding for the Council.

Whilst it was recognised that there was an unavoidable need to draw upon the Council's financial reserves for this budget year, given the short-term financial outlook, reserves were by nature finite and would eventually run out. This was clearly an unsustainable long-term financial position, as the Council could not rely upon use of reserves to achieve a balanced budget indefinitely. It was asked that the Executive Member confirm their intent to distance themselves from reliance on the use of financial reserves in future budgets and to provide an indication of the period within which they hoped that this would be achieved.

Councillor Neil, Executive Member of Finance and Business Change responded that the budget update report which had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 49.