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Agenda item

Medium Term Financial Strategy and Budget 2021/22

Minutes:

The Deputy Chief Executive introduced this report, explaining that the draft budget had been available for public consultation, before being presented to Committee, Cabinet and Council for approval. 

 

The Local Government Settlement had been produced in December, which gave the Council financial certainty for the year 2021/22. 

 

The Secretary of State had allowed Councils to increase the Council Tax by £5 for Band D properties and pro-rota for other properties. 

 

The Chancellor had announced a freeze on public sector pay, this would be a saving for the Council.  The budget assumes that there would be a pay award of 1%, however, the pay award remained subject to consultation. 

 

Other less significant issues for the budget included; the contract coming to an end for collecting sharps, the responsibility for collecting these items fell on the Council; increased provision for additional audit fees in the budget; changes to governance arrangements in Publica, the Council’s share of cost of this was £5,000 per annum.

 

Comments and queries from Members included:

 

(a)        A risk the budget faced was from Covid-19, the budget included funding announced by Government for the impact of Covid-19 in 2021/22, but it was not certain if this funding would be sufficient to mitigate risks, such as car parking income and income from leisure provision.

 

(b)        The collection of business rates could impact the budget, if support from the Government was reduced.

 

(c)        Consideration of future leisure provision, would need to be reviewed on the basis of more information from the leisure review.

 

(d)        The Deputy Chief Executive had included her opinion on the robustness of the estimates used in the budget and the adequacy of reserves, which was contained in the Cabinet papers for Cabinet on 8 February 2021.

 

(e)        There was a one off payment into the pension fund, effectively paying the deficit payments due for the period 2020/21 to 2022/23 up-front.  This had saved £184,000 each year.

 

(f)         The Capital Programme Investment Board had been set up to look at and process capital projects, to put forward to Cabinet and Council.

 

(g)        Consideration should be given to greater accessibility throughout the District for access to broadband, for work and study.

 

(h)        A review would take place of how to approach the budget consultation next year, as the understanding of some respondents was that Council Tax was only rising in Band D.  It was disappointing that the Green agenda was not high on resident’s priorities.  It was an ongoing process of communication.

 

(i)         Commercial properties in the centre of Cirencester should be considered under the housing strategy for affordable housing.

 

(j)         Was there a case to dispose of assets which the Council owned outside the District, re-investing the sale proceeds into the District for affordable housing?  The properties had been owned by the Council for a long time and were generating an income to the Council, if disposed of other sources of income would need to be considered. 

 

(k)        Future projects need to generate income and be linked to corporate objectives and strategies such as the Corporate Plan, Green Economic Growth Strategy, Recovery Investment Strategy, Climate Emergency Strategy, local plan, with rigorous structure for budget proposals and funding to be able to carry out projects.

 

(l)         Following the peer review, the MTFS had been produced in a narrative form, which had, hopefully, been valuable to Members.

 

Councillor Bloomer had to leave the meeting due to poor internet connection and apologised (6.09pm).

 

The Deputy Chief Executive and the Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Finance were thanked for putting the budget together this year, in a way that the Committee had been able to see more detail, and looked forward to working with them to improve for the future.

 

A comment to the Cabinet from the Committee was to continue to improve on planning for the budget and consultation for the future.

 

RESOLVED that the comments of the Committee on the budget proposals 2021/22 and the Medium Term Financial Strategy be provided to Cabinet and Council.

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