Agenda item

(To receive a report by Michelle Grady (Assistant Director – Finance), which invites the Board to consider a report on the Council Budget 2022/23, which is due to be presented to the Executive on 8 February 2022. The views of the Board will be presented to the Executive as part of their consideration of this item)

Consideration was given to a report by the Assistant Director – Finance, which invited the Board to consider a report on the Council Budget 2022/23 which was due to be considered by the Executive on 8 February 2022.

The Final Local Government Finance Settlement was expected to confirm the Provisional Settlement in February 2022, and at the end of January 2022 the Council would receive confirmation of Council Taxbase and Collection Fund balances from our local District Councils. Upon the receipt of this information, the budget proposals for 2022/23 will be confirmed at the meeting of the Executive on 8 February 2022.

Of the £1.6 billion that was granted to funding for local government that was announced for 2022-23, a large proportion - £822m - had been distributed through the new services grant for 2022-23 which would support inflation and uplifting the national living wage. £637 million had also been added into the existing social care grant to support children and adult social care.

The Board was informed that the local government in England would receive an additional £4.8bn in grant funding over the next three years which was described as “for social care and other services”. There would also be additional funding of £3.6bn over three years for adult social care reform, to implement the cap on personal care costs and changes to the means test, which would be weighted towards later years as the costs of the changes grew over time.

Saving strategies were set out in the report with a view to delivering over £25 million worth of savings over the period, in the context of delivering £350 million worth of savings since the period of austerity over the last decade. Savings included capitalising on the Council’s transformation programme and looking at process efficiency and smarter working with the aim of protecting frontline services.

Full details of revenue budget costs were detailed within the report and included total cost pressures including pay inflation of just over £41million with some key cost pressures being for adult care; price inflation; national living wage; and demands on services such as children in care and home to school transport.

The Council could increase its Council tax by up to 6% for 2022/23 and the proposed increase for the adult care precept of 3% would generate around £10 million from the current tax base for funding for the Council.

The Council’s capital programme had been updated to ensure that the ten year programme was sustainable and affordable in terms of the revenue cost. No new schemes had been added to the programme but there had been updates to some of the terms of the major road schemes and school requirement schemes to reflect current costs. 

Consideration was given to the report and during the discussion the following points were noted:

·         It was unknown what the Fairer Funding review would involve and whether it would be a fundamental review including reviewing the localised business rates system, or just a reset of the data and formula used. There was a debate around the weighting of factors such as for deprivation and sparsity which still needed to be resolved.

·         In relation to the rising energy costs, the Council used the ESPO framework for purchasing energy. The ESPO contract provided the Council with some certainty around the rates the Council was paying as the prices were fixed for a period of time.

·         As a result of the review of the Executive and Management Support arrangements, 30 staff would be leaving the Council on voluntary terms. The remodelling might lead to a change in the delivery of certain services by utilising the technology now available. In addition, the smarter working programme meant that there was reduced mileage and overheads from less staff travelling to meetings.

·         The financial volatility reserve was kept between £40million - £50million to enable the Council to continue delivering services. If the Fairer Funding review did not go in favour of the Council, then the Council could be looking at £5million - £10million of savings per year. The financial volatility reserve provided a buffer to enable the Council to transition from the current spending base to the future spending base over a three to four year period.

·         The latest staff survey had recently been completed and the key headlines coming out of the data was that the employee wellbeing rating remained strong. There continued to be a lot of support for the smarter working agenda as it gave people the flexibility to deliver their job in the best possible way.  The Council had heavily invested in supporting the wellbeing of staff and those support measures would mitigate the lone working issues which had been raised in the last staff survey. Staff were also now able to go into the office when they wanted to.

·         The smarter working savings from reduced mileage costs were already included in the budget proposals. Some frontline staff, such as social workers, were still having to travel, plus some service areas did not need to travel as part of their roles, which would impact on the level of savings available.

·         The smarter working programme would enable staff to come into service hubs which have been set up to bring staff together to share ideas and work collaboratively. Hybrid working would provide several benefits to staff while delivering savings through reduced travel and a reduced building estate.

·         Predicting the business rates collection fund was difficult as each district council varied between having surpluses and deficits. As a result, the budget included an assumption that there would be no surplus or deficit.

RESOLVED:

1.      That the Executive’s budget proposals, as set out in the report, be supported.

2.      That a summary of the above comments be passed on to the Executive as part of its consideration of this item.