Agenda and draft minutes

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

The minutes of the Executive meeting held on 10 April 2024 submitted and approved as a correct record.

The Director of Environment and Community Services submitted a report for Executive consideration. The report sought approval for the purchase of an additional 12,000 bins to respond to the increased demand for the garden waste subscription service. The virement of capital resource from the Traffic Signals scheme would fund the purchase and delivery of the additional bins, and the report sought delegated authority for the Director of Environment and Community Services to purchase additional waste bins, in line with service demand.

Following the Executive Report of 21 November 2023 the Council purchased 30,000 residual waste bins and 14,000 garden waste bins at a cost of £1.2m as part of the overall Waste Strategy Review.  A total of £1.135m had been spent on new bins to date. The reason for replacing bins was to move green waste collection off diamond lift bins and on to comb lift bins reducing vehicle costs and increasing resilience within the service. This also supported the movement to a more sustainable waste collection service through the reduction of side waste and other ancillary issues, promoting recycling rates.

On the 8 March 2024 the Council introduced a chargeable green waste service and introduced fortnightly collection for residual waste. The Council expected 9,300 subscribers. The 14,000 bins the Council had purchased were expected to cover subscribers to the service and had a contingency level of bins following the Council’s decision to implement a chargeable service.  The demand for the garden waste subscription service had increased significantly over anticipated demand modelling. The  service currently had over 19,000 subscriptions, which was 9,000 more than anticipated and this had resulted in the need for more brown garden waste bins to be ordered urgently to meet demand.  In order to meet this additional demand, and further potential increased demand throughout the year, an additional 12,000 brown garden bins were required at an additional cost of £0.376m.

As part of the Revenue and Capital Budget Forecast Outturn position at Quarter Two 2023/24 report to Executive on 21 November 2023, Executive approved the allocation of £1.2m in the Capital Programme in order to fund wheeled bin replacements as part of a comprehensive Waste Strategy Review.

The additional 12,000 green waste bins would cost £0.376m and it was proposed that this was funded from the remaining budget of £0.065m and a virement of £0.311m from the traffic signals capital budget that was funded from Council resource which might be decommitted due to the receipt of unplanned grant from TVCA as explained below.

Subsequent to the approved Capital Programme by Council on 8 March 2024, TVCA had announced a total of £2.5m in grant funding for the upgrade of traffic signals across the Tees Valley, for which Middlesbrough was the lead authority. This included £0.5m allocated to Middlesbrough. This grant funding could have replaced some of the Council capital resource previously set aside to fund this work.  It was therefore recommended that £0.311m be vired from the Traffic Signals scheme to fund the purchase and delivery  ...  view the full minutes text for item 23/105

The Executive Member for Finance and Governance submitted a report for Executive consideration. The report sought approval of the Household Support Fund Scheme (HSF) for the first half of 2024/25 and sought delegated authority for the Director of Finance and the Executive Member for Finance to make minor revisions/modifications to the plan.

On 6 March 2024, the Chancellor announced in the Spring Budget a number of measures to provide further help through the extension of the Household Support Fund (HSF) to support low-income households to cover the period 1 April 2024 to 30 September 2024.

Each Local Authority was required to prepare a local scheme to determine how the funding provided would be distributed. The amount allocated to Middlesbrough was £1,653,615.

Government guidance required Local Authorities to clearly advertise the scheme to residents, including publication on the Council’s website.

The value of individual awards was to be determined by Local Authorities in accordance with the parameters set out in the guidance.

The proposed scheme was based on the Council’s previous successful HSF schemes and had been endorsed by the Council’s Financial Inclusion Group and the relevant internal departments including Children’s Services and Adult Social Care.

The scheme was designed to support vulnerable residents and low-income households that included children, pensioners, people with disabilities and other households who might be experiencing financial difficulties brought about by the economic challenges.

The proposed scheme was set out in Table 1 of the report. Estimated expenditure equated to £1.521m (excluding administration costs).

In line with the guidance, the Council was able to recover administrations costs to deliver the scheme and these had been calculated at £0.132m.  This equated to 8% of the scheme funding. The administrative costs were in line with those of surrounding Local Authorities and also aligned to costs incurred from the administration of earlier HSF delivery plans.

Following implementation of the delivery plan, any remaining funds would be allocated to Council Tax accounts with a then current award of Council Tax Reduction (CTR) and where an outstanding balance remained following the issue of a summons in 2024/25 financial year. The Council also reserved the right to widen the group to those accounts not in receipt of CTR.

The scheme had been designed to provide support across the defined six-month period for awards.

The scheme would be subject to periodic reviews to allow alterations to be made should the scheme requirements need to change to keep pace with events.

Appropriate counter fraud measures would be put in place to minimise risk in accordance with the Council’s policies and procedures.

ORDERED

That Executive approve:

1.    The Household Support Fund delivery plan for 2024, which will be delivered between 1 April 2024 and 30 September 2024 and as set out in Table 1 (para 18) to target four main groups:

·         Families with children and in receipt of benefits.

·         Pensioners in receipt of Council Tax Reduction (CTR) and in receipt of Pension Credit Guarantee Credit (PCGC)  

·         Singles/Couples in receipt of benefits.

·         Application-based awards for residents  ...  view the full minutes text for item 23/106

None.

All decisions will come into force immediately as they were considered under urgency provisions.