Issue - meetings

ORDERED that Executive approve the proposed arrangements for improving the effectiveness of capital programme governance, monitoring and reporting including the terms of reference for the Strategic Capital Board and Corporate Capital Board.

The Executive Member for Finance submitted a report for Executive consideration.

The purpose of the report was to propose revised arrangements for improvements to the Council’s governance arrangements for planning, managing, delivering and reporting its capital investment programme.

The Council had a sound Capital Financing Strategy that was approved annually by the Council as part of the Medium-Term Financial Plan and should be read together with the Treasury Management Strategy that was fundamentally important to securing long term affordability of capital investment and the wider cash management of the Council. A hyperlink to the 2024/25 Capital Programme & Capital Strategy was provided in the report which was approved by Council on 8 March 2024.

The Council’s performance in the effective deployment of its capital investment plans should be measured by the delivery of capital programmes and projects on time and within budget and the delivery of planned outputs and outcomes that were clearly linked to the Council plan objectives. However, this was difficult to achieve based upon the current working practices and reporting arrangements.

The Capital Programme was the Council’s investment plan in long term assets that was essential to support the delivery of operational services and to enable the transformation of service delivery models across the organisation. The scale of annual capital expenditure was significant (£50m - £100m). These financial resources were limited, valuable, and had to be managed effectively and accounted for and reported appropriately in order to achieve good value for money in the use of Council resources.

ORDERED that Executive approve the proposed arrangements for improving the effectiveness of capital programme governance, monitoring and reporting including the terms of reference for the Strategic Capital Board and Corporate Capital Board.

OPTIONS

The option recommended (with separate capital boards) was viewed as the best way forward given the current weaknesses in the capital governance structure. The only other feasible option would have been to merge this activity with the existing revenue budget monitoring processes. However, there was a need for a cross directorate collaborative approach to capital governance and there were a range of issues that required dedicated attention of officers and members in a forum that was not distracted by operational revenue budget matters.

REASONS

To establish more robust arrangements to address weaknesses in current arrangements and to secure value for money in the use of capital resources.