Agenda item
To receive and consider a report from the Portfolio Holder for Finance and Enabling
Up to 30 minutes is allowed for this item; no longer than 10 minutes for presentation of the report and then up to 3 minutes for each question to be put and answered.
Minutes:
As Portfolio Holder for Finance and Enabling, Councillor B. Cooper presented his annual report. He explained that he been in post as portfolio holder for 18 months. His portfolio covered not only finance but also Customer Access and Financial Support, Legal, Equalities and Democratic Services, Information and Computer Technology, and Emergency Response. Human Resources and Organisational Development had also been added in the summer.
Councillor Cooper thanked Jayne Pickering, Claire Felton, Amanda Singleton, Deb Poole and Sue Hanley and their teams for their contributions to the report and more importantly for their hard work for the Council and continued support to help him gain an understanding of the activities of each department.
Finance took up a large amount of Councillor Cooper’s time as portfolio holder whilst not more important than the other departments, Councillor Cooper advised finance influenced and in many ways exercised control on all activities of the Council. There were 27 people in finance whose time allocation was 37% for Bromsgrove District Council and 63% for Redditch Borough Council. The reason for this disparity was principally because Redditch still had its own housing stock to manage. There were three teams: Accounting, Payroll, and Payments and Insurance. Members were all aware of the financial management of the Council from the reports to Committees, Cabinet and to the full Council.
As discussed at the last meeting of Council, the finance team had closed the 2017/2018 accounts and the external auditors had given their opinion. The Council had a modest underspend and more than met its savings target for the year and there was no reduction in Council services. It is very gratifying that the auditors had not only approved the accounts without qualifications, but had also given an unqualified opinion on Value for Money. Members had been pleased when the chief external auditor had said at the Audit Board meeting in July “BDC is in a good place”. This had been a success not only for the Council’s finance team but reflected well on all the Council’s staff.
Although considerable progress had been made in the Council’s financial governance, as indicated by the Auditors’ opinion this year, the Council could still make improvements with budgeting, identification of savings, monitoring those savings achieved and recognising the effects, if any, of those savings on the Council’s activities and services, business cases must be even more robust. Councillor Cooper was pleased that the Council had agreed in July, to support the implementation of the Enterprise Resource Planning solution which would make these activities much more effective. The systems would begin to be rolled out at the end of this year and be fully operational by April 2020.
It was important because although the Council’s finances were currently very satisfactory, they would become more and more difficult to manage over the years to come, especially in respect of the Negative Revenue Support Grant from 2019-2020 and if there was significant changes to the New Homes Bonus Scheme which could lead to a major reduction in income. The Council was facing the prospect of balancing the budget by using money from balances, in the years to come. This was clearly unsustainable so difficult decisions would have to be made and new sources of income needed to be found, such as return on investments in housing and business units. In this regard, the Council was delighted that the planning for development of the Burcot Lane site for housing was now progressing with the support of Homes England.
As the portfolio holder, Councillor Cooper was determined that the Council continued to improve its financial governance. Regular performance reviews of Portfolio Holders and senior officers by the Leader and Chief Executive were taking place. Finance was an important component of those reviews. Departmental Heads were being more robustly challenged as part of the budget setting process and zero based budgeting was being encouraged. Councillor Cooper believed that the Finance and Budget Working Group (FBWG), a sub- committee of O&SB, had been a success; its scrutiny of aspects of the Council’s finances was proving very helpful to the Director of Finance and to the Portfolio Holder. This autumn the FBWG will be reviewing the budget setting process and be involved in reviewing the setting of Fees and Charges. The FBWG’s success in helping to improve financial governance in the Council was in part due to the fact that it was non- party political. Councillor Cooper was grateful to the Chairman, Councillor Mallett, and to Councillors Collella, Hotham, Laight and Thomas, for their contributions.
The Customer Access and Financial Support Service was a large and important part of the Council. It was a visible and vital customer facing service of the Council. There was a high proportion of part time staff, 84.58 full time equivalent posts, whose allocation was 40% to Bromsgrove District Council and 60% to Redditch Borough Council; the difference was because of the greater workload with Redditch residents. The Service was organised into teams, Revenues and Benefits, Welfare Support, Customer Support, Quality and Improvement and Systems Development. The service was subject to review in 2017 and its recommendations, which were approved by Council in April 2017, were fully implemented by the end of 2017. The review led to the creation of new roles in the Financial Independence Team, Recovery and Welfare Support. This year, there had been some problems with sickness, and staff retention and recruitment in parts of the service, which were being addressed. There was no evidence that this was because of the reorganisation. There were many challenges, not least the rolling out of Universal Credit (UC) which would start in Bromsgrove this September to be completed by in May 2019. It would undoubtedly increase the work of the Benefits and Welfare Support Teams. As a result of UC roll out as well as other issues such as Council Tax Support for care leavers, Bromsgrove District was reviewing its Council Tax Support Scheme and a paper on an amended scheme should be going out to consultation subject to Cabinet approval in early October.
Legal Services provided vital support to the Council, a lot of it was behind the scenes but their activities could be seen particularly by Members of the Planning and Licensing Committees.
Councillor Cooper highlighted that everyone was well aware of the support given to them from the Democratic Services Team in Council, Committees, sub-committees, and in organising training. The annual report of the Overview and Scrutiny Board presented by Councillor Mallet at the last Council was a tribute to the hard work of the Democratic Services Team.
There had been no elections in the District since Councillor Cooper’s last report 12 months ago but the Electoral Services department had been active in getting residents on to the electoral roll.
The Information and Computer Technology Team (ICT) consisted of 23 whole time equivalent staff shared between the two councils. They were involved in web development, information management including data protection, geographical information systems, help and support as well as the ICT areas of desktops, the server, phone system and networks. They had been busy as outlined in the report. Cabinet and Council were concerned last year about the difficulty in filling a staff vacancy because of the competition for IT workers from the private sector which could provide higher pay. Eventually this was solved by employing an outside contractor to provide infrastructure support. This started on 3rd July 2017 and has been very successful to date. There were breakout clauses built in to the contract (which would run for two years) for poor performance.
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Human Resources and Organisational Development became part of Councillor Cooper’s portfolio in the summer. The team consisted of 13.24 whole time equivalent staff. A summary of the service activities was provided in the report.
With tragedies such as Grenfell Tower and the Manchester Arena still in everyone’s minds, Councillors could be reassured by the knowledge that the Council continued to review its emergency plans and processes.
Coming back to the matter of governance, Councillor Cooper was hopeful that the Corporate Performance Working Group, a sub group of the Overview and Scrutiny Board, would develop into a powerful tool to scrutinise the Council’s performance by using the measures which were published on the dashboard, in particular, in relation to the Council’s strategic purposes. This would be helpful in assessing performance of several parts of his portfolio, for example customer access, revenues and benefits, and in relation to the Council’s strategic purpose in “helping me to be financially independent”. Councillor Cooper wished the chair of the Working Group, Councillor Shirley Webb and her colleagues every success in their endeavours.
Finally, Councillor Cooper thanked the Leader and Cabinet for their support and together with the support that he had had from Jayne Pickering and the other senior officers of the Council had been excellent he confirmed that there may be questions which he would attempt to answer, but if there required a detailed or a technical answer, he would provide a considered written response outside of the meeting.
A number of areas were discussed in detail following presentation of Councillor Cooper’s report, these included:
· Whether the introduction of the new system would bring the Council in line with other local authorities in Worcestershire. Councillor Denaro confirmed that the new system would be across both Bromsgrove and Redditch Councils and that Wyre Forest were also aware of what the system could do.
· The challenges from the introduction of Universal Credit and in respect of the Local Council Tax Support Scheme, which did not mirror the national benefits. Councillor Cooper acknowledged that this was not particularly well phrased and clarified that the proposed changes to the Local Council Tax Support Scheme, which would be going out to consultation in October, would align the two.
· The open and transparent approach of the Finance and Budget Working Group.
· Concerns that action in respect of the Burcot Lane site had been slow to get off the ground and the move to the current sites had had significant financial implications to the Council. This included the Council now being situated in a listed building which brought with it a number of costly restrictions.
· The biggest threats to the Council’s financial situation, which appeared to be the Negative Support Grant (NSG) and the threatened changes to the New Homes Bonus scheme. Councillor Cooper confirmed that there was currently a consultation out from Central Government in respect of the NSG and whilst it was hoped that this would be overturned it was likely to be at a cost to other areas.
Supporting documents:
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