Venue: Council Chamber - Guildhall, Swansea. View directions
Contact: Scrutiny 636292
Items
No. |
Item |
1. |
Disclosure of Personal and Prejudicial Interests.
Minutes:
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2. |
Public Questions
·
Questions must relate to matters on the open
part of the Agenda of the meeting, and will be dealt with in a 10 minute period
Minutes:
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3. |
Scrutiny of the Annual Budget
·
Link to
Cabinet
Papers for 14 February 2019, which contain the budget proposals
(papers should be available online from 7 February 2019).
·
Councillor Rob Stewart – Cabinet Member for
Economy and Strategy
·
Ben Smith - Head of Financial Services &
Service Centre
Minutes:
- £8m overspend predicted with some
improvement expected in Q4
- Ongoing pressures in
social care
- Local Government is not
funded well enough – austerity is not over
- Looked after children is
still a pressure area in financial terms
- Ongoing discussions over
care costs between local health board and Swansea Council
- As Central Government
funding reduces the burden goes onto the local tax payer
- Uncertainty around funding
for the next few years
- Would like to see grants
moved into the Revenue Support Grant
- Other authorities are in
the same position
- Biggest risk is the
ability at pace and scale to achieve the savings
- Teachers Pay Award,
Pensions, General Inflation and Living Wage are all unfunded centrally
- Some of the 161 posts at risk
are already vacant
- Reserves are at lowest
advisable level
- Some additional capital
monies from Welsh Government
- Having flexibility in
revenue grants has been very helpful
- Reduction in capital
financing charge costs this year due to MRP review
- Costs remain the same over
lifetime - but timing affected –
lower repayments to start with, then increasing, then stopping earlier
- No allowance has been made
for income yet on city regeneration schemes – as a result the maximum
public sector subsidy has been assumed
- Limiting debt to 40 years
rather than letting it run on indefinitely
- There is a process for
filling critical frontline services
- Looking at changes for
sickness and how it is managed
- The Housing Revenue
Account -revenue and capital
investment is supported by rent levels
- There needs to be a
reasonable level of rent increase to maintain housing stock
- There is a school building
and transformation agenda for the City, the amount needs adjusting to
account for the £20m extra grant from Welsh Government
- There will be a
consultation period for the increase of Council Tax on empty and
holiday/second homes
- Discussed non domestic
rates re: HMOs
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4. |
Summarising Views and Making Recommendations
·
Chris Holley, Convener of the Service
Improvement and Finance Performance Panel will then attend Cabinet on the 14
February to feed in the collective views of the scrutiny performance panels.
Minutes:
·
The Panel discussed the content of the letter
based on the discussion from the previous item
·
Points from each Panel as follows;
Development and Regeneration Budget
- There is a risk associated
with the governance review – if the governance review is unfavourable this
may impact the money which is due to come to Swansea Council to offset
what has already been spent.
- There is a risk in
relation to the Business Case still not having been signed off. Until this
has been done, no money can flow to Swansea Council – again this means
that the money which has already been spent is at risk. This would be a
significant problem.
- There needs to be enough
business support to deliver regeneration projects – clarification on how
‘top slicing’ works (taking a percentage from externally funded projects
to fund business support roles) would be helpful.
Adult Services Budget
- 80% of proposed savings
have been achieved in this financial year.
The savings target for next financial year therefore seems to be
ambitious especially as much of the expenditure is demand-led.
- With us overspending by £1
million this year due to ‘resistance from the LHB to discuss equitable and
appropriate contributions towards identified packages of care’ there was
concern in the panel that this will be an ongoing issue in the next
financial year. The panel felt that this needs to be resolved as soon as
possible if we are to keep to budget for 2019-20
- It is not fully clear when
savings kick in from each of the service commissioning reviews or which
savings relate to which review. This process appears to be fairly opaque
as far as the panel is concerned and we would welcome a more detailed
breakdown.
- We will be revisiting the
budget again in October so we can more closely monitor the outcomes of the
planned efficiency savings.
Education - Budget
- The Panel were pleased to
see that education has ‘relative prioritisation’ in the budget again this
year.
- The Panel were concerned
about the impact of the cost of the increase in teachers pensions not
being covered (at present) by the UK Government. The panel want to
ensure that Cabinet are doing everything possible to ensure that schools
are not disadvantaged by this substantial amount.
- The Panel were pleased to
hear that the school music service will receive extra funding this year
from Welsh Government and were keen to emphasise the importance of pupils
being able to access and be engaged in music.
- The Panel were pleased to
hear about the planned improved clarity and transparency of grant funding
that is distributed via ERW but they are keen for these improvements to be
monitored moving forward.
Child and Family
- Budget
- No real concerns as far as budget is concerned. All questions
were answered at the meeting.
- Although pleased to see budget for CFS is increasing next year, we
understand that it is not increasing in real terms as the increase is to
cover increases in salary and accommodation costs.
- The Panel acknowledges that it is difficult to forecast what is
going to transpire during the year as it is a demand driven service.
- The CFS Panel will continue to scrutinise the Service going forward
and make suggestions and recommendations for improvement.
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Letter to Cabinet Member PDF 209 KB
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Response from Cabinet Member PDF 310 KB
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