The Director of Corporate Services, Caroline Holland, introduced the report and outlined the overall financial position at the end of the second quarter, with a forecast net positive variance at the end of year of £1,478k. She said that Cabinet would receive a report on the deficit on the Dedicated Schools Grant and the proposed recovery plan at its meeting on 27 January.

Caroline Holland provided additional detail in response to questions:

·         Cabinet will receive a report on the annual review of the Veolia contract in January and this will be reported subsequently to the Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Panel

·         savings are monitored continually and replacements are required for any that cannot be met

·         Cabinet will consider a growth bid for the Children Schools and Families budget at its January meeting and the subsequent budget will be monitored closely to ensure that the budget is set at the right level and that outcomes are delivered

·         The staffing establishment (page 138 onwards) shown in the iTrent column is higher than that shown in the budget FTE column because it includes all staff in posts including those for projects and maternity leave cover.

·         Spend on agency staff is monitored and challenged in order to reduce this wherever possible. The total number of agency staff has reduced but costs have increased due to the specialist nature of the roles being covered. Standards and General Purposes Committee receive quarterly updates.

·         IT capacity is one of the issues being examined as part of the internal review. The council is currently working with BT to rollout SharePoint and Office 365.

·         The Director of Corporate Services has delegated authority to sign up to the Londonwide council grants scheme this year – timing issues this year mean that the decision will not be taken by Cabinet

Miscellaneous debt update (page 122 onwards)

The Head of Revenues and Benefits, David Keppler, introduced the update and drew members’ attention to the increase in the net level of arrears during the second quarter, which had reduced slightly in subsequent months. He said that there had been some progress on recouping adult social care debt,  that the use of a specialist debt collection agency had continued to be productive and that the South London Legal partnership had agreed to undertake this work for an initial trial period of six months. He said that the level of housing benefit debt that was recovered continued to increase, largely due to the Department of Work and Pensions’ real time data matching initiative.

David Keppler provided additional information in response to questions:

·         Adult social care debts include unpaid charges for services plus agreed charges against clients’ property

·         PCN debt is for parking and moving traffic offences, one third of which relate to vehicles registered outside the borough.

·         CCTV photos have been helpful in encouraging people to pay fines promptly. CCTV and ANPR has been helpful in finding vehicles against which an unpaid PCN is due

·         The South London Fraud Service investigates misuse of Blue badges