Issue - meetings

A presentation on the Bridging the Gap strategy (Appendix 4) in the budget proposals for 2013/14 by the Cabinet Member Finance and Mark Sheldon, Director of Resources and an opportunity for the committee to ask any questions and make any recommendations they would like Cabinet to consider. 

(Appendix 2 and 4 of the budget papers have been circulated with the papers and Members are referred to the full budget papers for Cabinet on 21 December 2012 available on the website and in the Members Room or on request from Democratic Services)

The chair explained that at this stage in the budget cycle, the committee would normally expect to receive a report from the Budget Scrutiny Working Group on the budget proposals together with any recommendations they wish to make to Cabinet. For the reasons previously given by the working group, they were not in a position to do this for 2013/14 however they had received a presentation on the budget at their meeting earlier this week.

The Director of Resources as Section 151 Officer gave a brief presentation on the Cabinet’s Interim Budget Proposals 2013/14 for consultation. The presentation outlined the budget assumptions, funding sources, the impact of the late settlement and areas of uncertainty in the MTFS.

He explained that the council had only been notified of the final government settlement on the Wednesday before the Friday 21^st December Cabinet meeting.  The impact of the settlement had been assessed and a revised version of the budget summary in appendix 2 of the budget papers had been circulated at the meeting on 21 December. The settlement had been better than expected in 2013/14 but was significantly worse in 2014/15. Consequently there was still further work to be done in remodelling the MTFS following the late settlement.

The Cabinet Member Finance referred to the Bridging the Gap strategy set out in appendix 4 of the budget papers.  He gave some context to the budget challenges by highlighting that since February 2008 the Council's net budget had fallen by about two and a half million pounds in less than five years and if inflation was factored in, this was a fall of around 25%. Over the next four years this figure could rise to a 40% cut in core government support since 2008.

Longer term, the financial challenge was to bridge the projected funding gap over the period of the MTFS. This was why a detailed, quantified five-year strategy for cutting costs and maximising income and bridging the medium term funding gap was being developed as outlined in Appendix 4 of the report. Overall he felt the council had been successful to date in dealing with significant cuts in resources without cutting essential services and whilst holding down council tax and parking charges. However he warned next year's budget would be a far greater challenge.

The Director of Resources reported that the budget scrutiny working group had expressed some nervousness about the increased worth of efficiency savings yet to be identified in 2014/15 which took the savings required from £275,000 to approximately £624,000.  They had asked whether there was any opportunity to bring forward savings from future years.  He advised that this would be the biggest topic for the bridging the gap meeting later this month.

The Cabinet Member Finance explained that the way that the New Homes Bonus (NHB) was used had been rethought and last year it was accepted that it needed to be treated as a regular source of income so part of it was taken into  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7