Agenda and minutes

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Commission held on 18 October 2023.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Commission held on 18 October 2023 be approved as a correct record, and signed by the Chairman.

Responses to all of the queries and requests for information raised in the meeting had been received or formed part of the agenda.

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests and the nature of that interest, including the existence and nature of the party whip, 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.

There were no indications that members would be participating while under the party whip.

There were no items of urgent business.

No submissions had been made by members of the public under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme for Overview and Scrutiny.

Stuart McKellar, Executive Director: Resources introduced the report and acknowledged it covered the latest predicted outturn on the revenue budget which had been presented to the Executive on 17^th October but that there had since been updates. It was noted the report looked ahead to what could be expected in future years, but the autumn statement was due tomorrow, which may impact predictions.

An update on the current position since it was presented to the Executive was provided verbally which included:

·       There was now a predicted overspend of £1.1 million compared to the predicted overspend of £2-3 million when the report was prepared. This was still a significant overspend and senior leaders had agreed additional measures to help decrease this amount further, such as signing off new requests to recruit staff at Central Management Team (CMT) level.

·       Senior leaders were reinforcing the message to staff that there was not a spending freeze but to only incur essential expenses.

·       Staffing was the biggest Council spend. Measures to bring costs down were being kept under review but if a complete freeze on recruitment were necessary then senior leaders would look at that in future.

·       An issue this year was high inflationary pressures. They were expected to decrease next year, but still be high compared to the last 10 years.

·       Reductions from income and pressures would impact the budget next year unless they could be mitigated in this year’s budget.

·       The medium-term projection, as outlined on page 15, table 2, was based on a number of high-level assumptions including a £10million gap over the next three years. Assumptions included Council Tax being raised by 5% each year, over the next three years. It was also assumed there would be small inflationary increases in government grants.

·       Leaders were expecting a large increase in the number of houses coming onto the Council Tax list by April next year which would equate to at least £700,000 increase in Council Tax, and it was projected there would be a £1.4million increase in Council Tax receipts likely as of April 2024.

A discussion took place, and the following questions were asked by Councillors:

Question - What impact had the senior leadership group, which was described at the last meeting, had on the budget and was it working well?

Response - Spending controls were tightening so there was no intention to relax mitigation controls including the senior leadership group which reviewed the budget regularly.

Question - What is the implication of the reduction in reserves as shown in the graph on page 30 and is there a concern at this stage of the year?

Response - Page 29 shows a corporate contingency budget which the Council has held every year to recognise the need for additional spending pressures during the course of the year. It was first set in 2000 to cover structural changes, such as covering redundancy costs, to make those types of costs sustainable over time. Leaders have not significantly drawn on this contingency fund for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31.