Issue - meetings

(To receive a report from the Executive Director – Resources which presents the Capital Strategy 2020/21.  The Capital Strategy provides a high level overview of capital expenditure, its financing and its longer term impact on future financial sustainability)

That the Capital Strategy 2020/21 be recommended to full Council for approval.

Consideration was given to a report from the Executive Director – Resources which advised that a Capital Strategy for 2020/21 had been prepared for the Council, in compliance with the CIPFA Prudential Code.  The purpose of the Capital Strategy was to provide members with a high level overview of capital expenditure, its financing and its longer term impact on future financial sustainability.  The Capital Strategy would be included in the Council's Budget Book and aimed to support budgetary decision making at the meeting of the County Council on 21 February 2020.

The Assistant Director – Strategic Finance presented the report and advised that the main aim was to ensure that the Strategy was affordable, and therefore a ten year capital programme was proposed to ensure that costs for the whole project were factored into future budgets.

The Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board (OSMB) advised that the Board had considered the Executive report at its meeting on 30 January 2020 and had supported the recommendations in the report.  The comments of the Board were circulated prior to the meeting for consideration by the Executive.

The Chairman of the OSMB highlighted that the Board had given consideration to developer contributions as they were an important aspect of a lot of schemes.  However, they were not always received before the project commenced and so the Council would have to fund any capital expenditure required upfront and then offset the cost once the developer contributions had been received.  The Board also highlighted the importance of the relationship between the proposed scheme and the Corporate Plan.

The Chairman of OSMB also reported the view that there was a need for a different form of capital monitoring by scrutiny which should be given consideration during the next financial year.  There was support for the view that members needed to have oversight of the progress of schemes and the benefits of the business case.  The Executive was advised that the Executive Director – Resources was looking into this matter.  Members should be able to look at variations in project costs and if they had questions, they should be referred to a scrutiny committee, to ensure that scrutiny was focused on matters which were important and valuable.

Further to the queries in relation to developer contributions, it was highlighted that they allowed the authority to progress with the large schemes.  Whilst it was acknowledged that they were not always received in advance of the project, there was a robust follow up process.  The timing of the receipt of these monies meant that a lot of projects were back loaded, and so would fund future projects.  It was noted that around Lincoln there were a lot big sites moving forward.  In terms of the Lincoln Eastern Bypass, the contributions were coming via slightly different arrangements, through CIL (Community Infrastructure Levy), rather than through a Section 106 which was open to challenge.

RESOLVED

            That the Capital Strategy 2020/21 be recommended to full Council for approval.