Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Carole Gandy, Alan Mason and Paul Swansborough with Councillors David Thain, Natalie Brooks and Michael Braley attending as substitutes respectively.

To invite Councillors to declare any Disclosable Pecuniary Interests or Other Disclosable Interests they may have in items on the agenda, and to confirm the nature of those interests, and any Party Whip.

There were no declarations of interests nor of any party whip.

To enable Members to review and scrutinise the costs associated with the strategic purposes of the Council.

(Report attached)

The Chair reminded Members that this evening’s meeting had been called to consider the budget and that Members had received additional information, which she had requested.

Officers explained that an enhanced budget was being prepared with all costs linked to the Council’s strategic purposes.  Savings were being looked at across the Council in order for a balanced budget to be achieved, although currently there was a deficit of approximately £1.7m.  There was an anticipated saving of £120k to be factored in following the agreement of the Shared Services Board to progress the review of Environmental Services.  There were also a number of pieces of work being carried out reviewing enabling services, which it was anticipated would also lead to savings.  Officers were not in a position to provide full details of where savings would be made, but preliminary figures were expected to be available in a draft proposal for the Executive Committee in December.  The budget figures that had been provided for Members’ consideration were those relating to 2014/15 which were also being used as a base for the 2015/16 budget.  A balanced budget was due in January/February 2015 and further reports would be brought to the Committee during this period.

Members were advised that a new method had been adopted to presenting budget information for the Committee to consider, in order to enable Members to carry out more detailed scrutiny.  The initial report provided the overall net costs against each strategic purpose including enabling services, with the additional papers providing a comparison for services for previous years split into gross expenditure and income.  The aim of the report was to enable Members to look at these figures and, if appropriate, pick any areas which they felt warranted further scrutiny in order to achieve savings.

Members commented that whilst they had information for the previous two years and the current year, which showed progress to date, it would have been helpful to have details of all services together with income and government grants, together with a summary sheet containing the overall figures.  Officers were also advised that it would have been useful for Members to have received the budget figure together with figures for the actual expenditure to ensure that these were in line.

Members discussed the following areas in detail:

·         Advice provided in respect of the strategic purposes “help me be financially independent” and “help me run a successful business”.

·         The spike in the payroll figures, which it was believed related to work delivered on behalf of Wyre Forest District Council.

·         The ability to provide the detail behind the figures and the role of Internal Audit.

·         The provision of a narrative against the higher figures in order for Members to understand the discrepancies when preparing such a report in future years.

·         The departure of the Head of Finance and Resources post and the associated redundancy costs.

·         The production of the report in the new format, taking account of strategic purposes and the availability of the same data for previous  ...  view the full minutes text for item 49.