Agenda and minutes

To receive any declarations of interest.

There were no declarations of interest received at this point in the meeting.

A joint report of the Mayor and the Executive Member for Finance and Governance was presented to set out the proposed direction, aspirations, investment, and funding requirements in relation to the Council’s Recover, Reset, Deliver Transformation Programme.

The Mayor provided a rationale for the report before referring Members to page three and advising of a proposed amendment to recommendation C.  It was suggested that the recommendation be reworded slightly to avoid specific Executive Member portfolios being attached to it.  The revised recommendation would read as follows:

c)     Delegates authority to the Chief Executive in consultation with the Elected Mayor, Director of Finance and the Executive Member with responsibility for finance, to apply Transformation Programme contingency of £1.717m and remaining Redundancy Budget of £2.900m for the purposes set out in this report.

Following Members’ consideration of the report, one single vote in respect of revised recommendation C, together with recommendations A, B and D as stated in the report, would be undertaken.

The Executive Member for Finance and Governance provided details regarding Capital Receipts; the following points were highlighted:

·        Page three, paragraph 1B set out the financial decision taken by Members on 27 March 2024 (referred to as Phase One), and the decision to be taken at this meeting, i.e., a request for additional funding (Phase Two).  The total funding for the Transformation Programme was £13.700m; £4.827m for Phase One, and £8.873m for Phase Two, subject to approval at this meeting.  It was possible that further phases may come forward as the programme progressed.

·        As outlined in the report, Local Authorities were not usually permitted to utilise capital, i.e., one-off monies generated from assets, land and property sales, to fund their revenue budgets, which paid for day-to-day operational costs such as staffing and service delivery.  However, the government had created an exception whereby in certain circumstances, receipts from the sale of assets could be utilised on a one-off basis to support the revenue budget.  In essence, capital receipts could be utilised to reduce the costs of services, to increase revenue income, or to support a more efficient way of operating services.  There were restrictions around the utilisation of capital receipts.  For example: a capital receipt received five years ago could not be utilised in the current year. 

·        The additional funding being requested was necessary for the following reasons:

1.     To deliver the savings that Council had agreed as part of the revenue budget.  It was explained that capital receipts were required to fund those identified savings, some of which were additional staffing or other investment costs, and others redundancies, which Members had agreed at the last meeting.

2.     To fund the Transformation Programme.  It was explained that following feedback from Members about a lack of clarity in detail, officers had been requested to provide further information to identify each of the budget saving suggestions and the costs or investment required against those.  This had been provided and was shown in the annex at page 34 onwards of the report.

3.     Unlike  ...  view the full minutes text for item 23/122