Agenda and minutes

RESOLVED:  To note the attendance at this meeting of the following duly appointed Reserve Members:-

No declarations of interest were made.

The Chair welcomed the Leader of the Council, the Portfolio Holder for Finance and Commercialisation, the Chief Executive and the Director of Finance to the meeting.

The Leader of the Council gave an introduction and explained that, in the seventh year of austerity and significant cuts to local government funding, it was now extremely difficult to secure yet more savings and achieve a balanced budget, particularly as the pressures in areas of service such as adult and children’s social care were so severe and increasing.  He confirmed that the Council’s priority continued to be to protect the most vulnerable in the community. 

The Chief Executive underlined the severity of the budget pressures.  He also made reference to the current Ofsted inspection of children’s care services and to the findings of the LGA Peer Review.  He looked forward to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s assistance in addressing the key challenges facing the Cabinet. 

Members asked a series of questions of the Leader and Chief Executive and received responses as follows:

Had the Leader instructed officers not to brief Opposition councillors on budget issues?

The Leader replied that this was not the case.

The Constitution required Members to be given regular up-to-date briefings and yet some Members had not been briefed on key projects, such as Phoenix and Infinity – was it not the duty of officers to brief all leading Members, not simply those of the Administration, on such issues?

The Chief Executive advised that it was his understanding that all shadow Portfolio Holders were regularly briefed and he was aware that other senior staff also briefed these Members on aspects of their services.  He accepted that, in relation to the Phoenix project, historically he had understood it had been necessary to be careful about the dissemination of some information due to commercial reasons, but had stressed to all Corporate Directors that Members should be briefed on all key projects. The Leader stated that he wished to improve the relationship between the Administration and the Opposition, and he gave the example of recent discussions about the Council agenda; however, he considered that these efforts were undermined by repeated criticisms and complaints about the Administration, and by approaches such as submitting more than 100 questions to a single Council meeting. 

What elements of the Transformation Programme were to be funded by capital receipts?

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Commercialisation explained that the Council were required to report the use of capital funds to the Government and the external auditors.  There were a number of different applications of this funding across the Transformation Programme and these were all contained in the capital allowance provision agreed for these purposes.

The ability of Members to scrutinise services and budgets properly had been affected by the reduction of dedicated scrutiny resources, the reduction in the number of Overview and Scrutiny Committee meetings, the most senior staff (Corporate Director) rarely attending those meetings and by inaccuracies and omissions in the Forward Plan of Key Decisions.  The  ...  view the full minutes text for item 197.

In accordance with the provisions of Committee Procedure Rule 14 (Part 4B of the Constitution), it was

RESOLVED:  At 9.59 pm to continue to 10.05 pm.