Caroline Holland, Director of Corporate Services

The Chair said that this report would be presented to the November meetings of the Overview and Scrutiny Commission and the three Panels. He advised the task group to focus comments on the corporate services aspects of the capital programme and as well as considering progress made against the 2013/14 corporate services savings (set out in the financial monitoring report on this agenda). The Director of Corporate Services added that some alternative and new savings would be taken to Cabinet in December and subsequently to the scrutiny meetings in January.

Medium Term Financial Strategy

Caroline Holland, Director of Corporate Services, and Paul Dale, Assistant Director of Resources, provided additional information in response to questions:

•   The departmental savings targets for 2015/16 onwards (paragraph 2.3) are based on weighted controllable expenditure. Weightings are 0.5 for Children, Schools and Families, 0.75 for Community and Housing, 1.5 for Environment and Regeneration, 1.5 for Corporate Services

•   The Minimum Revenue Provision (MRP) will be taken into the reserves and used to pay external debt when it becomes due for payment (Paragraph 2.5.1). ACTION: Director of Corporate Services to provide the assumed interest rates for asset life of 5 and 50 years

Table 2.6.1

•   Inflation assumptions for pay are 1% in 2014/15 and 2015/16, 1.5% in 2016/17 and 2017/18

•   Price inflation assumption is around 1.5% overall, higher for some specific areas such as energy process

•   Additional fees and charges assumed 1.5% growth

•   Growth item refers to the adult social care growth that has been approved previously

•   Other corporate items includes the pension fund additional contributions, level of contingency, items relating to disaster recovery, payments for precepts and levies and other adjustments (more detail in September report to Cabinet)

•   Collection Fund items for 2014/15 are for the write back of the council tax bad debt provision and increase in collection rate. This will be subsumed into base budget in future.

Capital programme

A task group member said that it would be helpful to have a short description of each of the items in the capital programme. In response to questions, Caroline Holland and Paul Dale provided further detail on some of the items in the corporate services capital programme:

•   The Acquisitions Budget for 2013/14 has been used for the purchase of a piece of land by the High Path Estate

•   The Capital Bidding Fund is used to provide match funding should any suitable schemes funded by the Greater London Authority or English National Heritage become available

•   Where there are zero items at present, these may change. Also, monies that aren’t used may be moved to future years or removed from the capital programme.

•   The Document Management and Customer Contact Programme items are estimated figures at present. Tender documents were sent out last week setting out an ideal “to be” system and asked bidders to come back with proposed solutions. The task group RECOMMENDED that councillors’ needs are taken into account in any document management solution. ACTION: Director of Corporate Services to consult with councillors – Councillor Diane Neil Mills volunteered to take part.

•   Asbestos safety works item for 2016/17 relates to corporate buildings. The task group suggested that the appointment of an asbestos compliance officer (item KSR45/CG03 in the risk register – page 89 of the agenda) be brought forward

•   The IT Strategy-unallocated item relates to monies set aside for the implementation of the strategy that have not yet been used – may be spent, carried forward or removed from capital programme

•   Paul Dale undertook to find out why the Invest to save items have zero predicted spend in 2015/16 ACTION: Assistant Director of Resources

Another member said that the capital programme overall was still quite large compared to spend in previous years. Caroline Holland and Paul Dale said that they were working with officers to predict likely spend more accurately and that the programme from 2014/15 onwards is closer to actual spend than previously. The task group agreed that it would be helpful to have a breakdown of 2013/14 spend to date on individual capital projects.

In response to a comment about the level of capital spend on maintenance of the borough’s roads, Caroline Holland said that recent road condition surveys had shown sustained improvement in both major and minor roads.

The Task Group AGREED that it would be useful for each of the Overview and Scrutiny Panels to examine the capital programme within their remit.