Agenda item

Objective:To understand the general approach to the planned maintenance of public facilities and the asset management strategy.

Report by Louise Eite, Head of Property Management and Decarbonisation.

The Vice-Chair said this subject had been discussed at a working group and sparked a lot of questions.  In the absence of the report author, the Deputy Chief Executive presented the report; the interim Director of Property was present to help answer questions, with any they cannot answer taken away for written responses in due course.

The Deputy Chief Executive said the report and appendices were self-explanatory, and commented that local government reorganisation was causing some uncertainty in the workforce, with several vacancies currently out to advert. With the Director of Finance, Property and Climate Emergency on maternity leave, he advised that he will concentrate on the finance aspects of her role, with Richard King of the Golden Valley team stepping in to manage Property Services.

The following questions were taken away for written responses:

-           [follow-up to written Question 2]  If inspections have been carried out historically on an ad-hoc basis but not written down, why is it six months to the target date for the action point?  If it is a case of just writing down what is being done, it should be faster than that?

-          [follow-up to written Question 6]  The asset management document puts a value of  £32.71m against community  assets - larger than what is in the statement of accounts – and it is not clear from the answer whether the difference is because we are using a different valuation basis, so we actually think assets are worth 32.7m more than what we have in books, or whether it is a case of things being put in different categories between the two documents.  Have we got hidden assets of £30+m?

-          [follow-up to written Question 7]  Noting the 28% increase in spend on unplanned maintenance in figures provided – why did this happen and is it expected to continue to rise?

-          Following on from the previous question: in answer to a written question on year-by-year budgeted spend -  ignoring 2025-26 - against those budgeted figures, it looks like we had an underspend £565k across years.  The previous question noted significant amounts for unplanned maintenance over several years. Although we are budgeting 600k, are we looking to that budget to not spend if we need to as a council overall and that is why we have an underspend there ?  This might be storing  up problems for the future – though it depends on whether that interacts with unplanned maintenance spends.   If we underspend on one and spend a lot elsewhere, where do we end up overall?

A Member was reassured to see a lot of maintenance items listed which fall within the Cheltenham Trust’s portfolio -  includes some of Cheltenham’s most important and iconic assets -  following a  history of misunderstanding about who is responsible for what, and asked if discussions have moved towards more agreement about how this is planned going forward or whether it still remains a challenge.  The Deputy Chief Executive said it all comes down to affordability:  the council has £600k to spend on preventative maintenance on an annual basis as part of the base budget, but one or two significant projects could use up two years’ budget in one go.  The Property Team identifies three categories for maintenance, but health and safety has been the dominant issue recently and cost more than £600k over the last few years, due in part to the identification of RAAC at Leisure@.  The property team knows what has to be done, including replacement of the running track at the Prince of Wales Stadium, but this cannot be funded from the existing budget.