Agenda item

Worcestershire Regulatory Services Budget 2021/22 - 2023/24

Meeting of Virtual Skype meeting, Worcestershire Regulatory Services Board, Thursday 19th November 2020 4.30 p.m. (Item 26/20)

Minutes:

The Head of Finance & Customer Services, Bromsgrove District Council, introduced the report and in doing so highlighted that the recommendations were caveated as starting point assuming that the base budget figure for 2020/2021 had been updated to include all of the increases mentioned at the Worcestershire Regulatory Services Board meeting in October 2020, including the additional funding for Wyre Forest District Council for accommodation and ICT costs.

The Head of Finance & Customer Services further drew Members’ attention to the Recommendations as detailed on pages 33 and 34 of the main agenda report.

Members were further informed that following assumptions had been made in relation to the projections:

· 2% pay award across all staff for 2021/22 – 20223/24. This will be subject to the National Pay Negotiations that are ongoing and therefore the final position will reflect any formally agreed increases, the budget also includes any employee entitled to an incremental increase.

· No inflationary increases in supplies and services, premises or transport.

· Pension back-funding will be paid by all partners.

The unavoidable salary pressures were not able to be met currently by WRS making additional income, in the main due to the pressures created by the pandemic and the response to it. The normal sources of income (local authorities,) were not currently focused on the areas of work that WRS delivered for income generation purposes and WRS officers were at the heart of the response locally. Therefore, an increase to partner funding would be required, as detailed on page 35 of the main agenda report.

Clearly, should the situation with the pandemic improve in the second half of 2021/2022, WRS Officers would be looking to move forward with the programme of income generation and the benefits of this may be seen in an underspend that could be returned to partners at year end. Hence, an upfront investment this year would give certainty to the service and the partners in terms of cost, with the potential for a return on investment if the pandemic situation eased.

In addition to the base budget there were three additional technical officers working on income generation, animal activity and gull control. Officers were unable to include these officers into the base budget as the income generation officer was a temporary agreement agreed by partner councils and the animal activity and gull control officer recharge percentage basis was different to the agreed partner recharge allocations.

RECOMMENDED that partner authorities approve the following for 2020/2021:

1.1 the 2021/22 gross expenditure budget of £3,739k as shown in Appendix 1.

1.2 the 2021/22 income budget of £529k as shown in Appendix 1.

1.3 the revenue budget and partner percentage allocations for 2021/2022 onwards:

Council	£’000	Revised %
Bromsgrove District Council	468	14.59
Malvern Hills District Council	412	12.82
Redditch Borough Council	564	17.57
Worcester City Council	532	16.58
Wychavon District	748	23.29
Wyre Forest District Council	486	15.15
Total	3,210

1.4 the additional partner liabilities for 2021/2022 in relation to unavoidable salary pressure.

Bromsgrove District Council	£9k
Malvern Hills District Council	£8k
Redditch Borough Council	£10k
Worcester City Council	£10k
Wychavon District Council	£14k
Wyre Forest District Council	£9k
Total	£60k

1.5 the additional partner liabilities for 2021/2022 in relation to three Technical Officers.

Council	Tech Officer Income Generation £000	Tech Officer Animal Activity £000	Tech Officer Gull Control £000
Bromsgrove District Council	5	6
Malvern Hills District Council	4	10
Redditch Borough Council	6	2
Worcester City Council	5	4	30
Wychavon District Council	7	9
Wyre Forest District Council	5	5
Total	32	36	30

Supporting documents: