To be sent separately to task group members as an exempt document until report has been cleared for public publication.

Open minute of closed session

The Director of Corporate Services, Caroline Holland, introduced the report and summarised the content. She drew the task group’s attention to the £700k overspend that is currently forecast for the end of the year. She stressed that the three month report is early in the year in terms of the forecasts for both the revenue and capital budgets and said that the increase in debt is typical for this stage of the year. She added that the quarterly monitoring report excludes information on the business rates pilot that could potentially bring in an additional £1.5m of income.

Caroline Holland, Roger Kershaw (Assistant Director of Resources) and David Keppler (Head of Revenues and benefits) provided additional information on specific sections of the report in response to questions:

Environment and Regeneration

Waste services – the non-budgeted internal debt charge arose due to an error in assigning the capital costs for vehicles.

Caroline Holland undertook to clarify what arrangement the council had made in relation to the removal of side waste that was reported in the Wimbledon Guardian. ACTION: Director of Corporate Services

Members noted that Veolia would be attending a meeting of the Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Panel on 3 September, providing an opportunity to ask questions about operational and contractual issues.

Children Schools and Families

Caroline Holland said that there was ongoing discussion with the department in order to identify the level of growth that will be needed.

Dedicated Schools Grant – Caroline Holland said that the £800m put aside by the government to assist with DSG budgets nationally would not go far, that developments were awaited on this and it was an area of concern for the council.

Community and Housing

The predicted overspends this year are marginal and are being addressed by the department.

Caroline Holland undertook to ensure that the next quarterly monitoring report would contain more information on the Public Health budget. ACTION: Director of Corporate Services

Capital Programme

The cost of repairs to or rebuild of the Bishopford Road Bridge and whether this will be covered by insurance will depend on the reason for its collapse. It is currently being inspected by structural engineers.

Morden regeneration update – currently awaiting funding confirmation from Transport for London, seeking a joint venture partner and working to clarify ballot conditions.

Miscellaneous debt update

David Keppler reported that the arrangement whereby a portion of housing benefit debt that had previously been written off was passed to a third party to collect and to share proceeds fifty-fifty had raised about £25k in the first two months of operation. He said that the longer term projections would become clear shortly. He reminded members that in future a lower level of housing benefit debt will be accrued and written off in future due to new data matching processes that have been introduced.

David Keppler undertook to provide an explanation for the unbudgeted surplus in the Housing Benefit budget referred to on page 5 of the report.

ACTION: Head of Revenues and Benefits

The task group AGREED that it would discuss the miscellaneous debt update earlier in the agenda than previously.

HR data

The task group asked the Director to consider how the data is presented and whether there was a way to show how much was spent rather than just showing headcounts. Caroline Holland explained that the data was presented this way in response to requests made by the task group in previous years but that she would give some thought to providing budget information on staffing.

Task group members expressed interest in discussing the Merton offer and recruitment and retention.

The task group AGREED to discuss HR issues earlier on at the next meeting.