Agenda item

To Panel is to consider the Final 2016/17 Revenue and Capital Budgets and the Medium Term Financial Strategy 2017/18 To 2020/21.

With the aid of a report by the Head of Resources (a copy of which is appended in the Minute Book) the Revenue and Capital Budgets 2016/17 and the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) was presented to the Panel. Members were told of two significant changes since the report was present at the January 2016 meeting of the Panel. They are:

·  The One Leisure draft income budget had been reprofiled and reduced over the period of the MTFS in order to better reflect the demands on the service. As such there has been a reduction in income of £0.9m across the MTFS period, and

·  Following a detailed analysis of the draft Local Government Settlement, an increased Revenue Support Grant (RSG) has been used in the MTFS. This equates to an additional £0.4m over the MTFS period.

This has had an impact upon the predicted deficit position in 2020/21 with the deficit increasing from £637k to £837k. Since the last meeting of the Panel the Cabinet have decided to continue with the Commercial Investment Strategy (CIS) and Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB). ZBB has analysed services bottom up but will now analyse across all services.

Following a question regarding the One Leisure income reprofiling and the benchmarking of figures, the Panel were told that the projected income streams of One Leisure had been reduced as when the original profiling took place the costs did not increase at the same level as revenue.

When pressed on benchmarking Members were advised that benchmarking with other local authority owned leisure centres is difficult as the majority of local authority owned leisure centres make losses. Although the commercial leisure centres have profits of 10-12%.

Following a question regarding the leisure facility at Alconbury, the Panel was informed that the leisure centre is expected to begin trading after quarter two in 2016/17. For the first three years the developers Urban and Civic will pay for any operating losses that occur.

The suggestion was put forward that the word electorate should be deleted and replaced with the word resident in the paragraph ‘section 4 has shown that the Council continues to face significant challenges over the medium term in its obligations to provide cost-effective services to its electorate’.

In response to a concern over the MTFS, Members were informed that although they still had to consider the MTFS the more pressing issue was the setting of the budget for 2016/17.

A Member addressed the Panel with a statement which outlined the problems the County Council was facing in regards to the adult, children and families budget. An alternative proposal was put forward which proposed that the Council raises council tax by 2% so that the voluntary sector could provide adult and social services which may help to alleviate the County Council’s budget shortfall and assist the more vulnerable residents of the District. Furthermore an additional proposal was advanced which proposed that Members could surrender a proportion of their car allowance in order to give the savings to the voluntary sector.

Members had sympathy for the issues raised by the Member however believed that it would be better if the Council did not interfere and allow the County Council to manage their budget. The Panel were advised that as not all Members claim car allowance the suggestion of surrendering a proportion would not yield the desired savings.

The Executive Councillor for Resources confirmed that there is no longer an incentive from Central Government for local authorities to freeze council tax however he did not believe that raising council tax to increase voluntary sector funding was the most prudent action to take. This is because the Executive Councillor for Resources believes that voluntary sector needs to make more efficiency savings.

(At 7.22pm, during the discussion of this item, Councillor J D Ablewhite entered the room).