Agenda item

To consider the level of spending against the Council’s Revenue and Capital budgets for the first 10 months to 31 January 2016.

The Committee was presented with the Financial Performance Monitoring Report as at month 10, which set out the summary revenue budget position for the Council and the individual directorates for the period April 2015 – January 2016, together with an outlook for the remainder of the year.

Members noted the position in relation to the working balances and raised questions in regards to the plans to improve working balances in the next financial year. The Leader of the Council advised the Committee of plans to re-profile the repayment of the Council’s debt using Minimum Revenue Provision restructuring. He provided the Committee with details, noting that whilst it would extend the period of repayments of debt from 25 to 50 years, it would pay off debt completely unlike the current arrangement, whilst releasing resources to increase reserves.

The Committee raised questions relating to the consistent overspend in Children’s Services and challenged the plans to alleviate the budgetary position of the directorate in the future. The Leader of the Council agreed that the consistent overspend of the directorate was a concern and explained that there was a legal duty to provide services for Looked After Children and that whilst the numbers of Looked After Children had stabilised at approximately 450 for the past year, the increasing costs were due to the increasingly complex nature of placements required.

The Leader of the Council reported to the Committee that there had been a significant number of large families, some of whom had moved into the borough with all of the children needing to be taken into care. It was noted that in certain cases, the extensive work of Children’s Services’ Early Help was missed and was not able to have an impact upon the families moving into the borough, with children already at an older age and having chaotic lifestyles. The Committee discussed the impact of transience on Children’s Services and noted the objective to find people moving into the borough and to encourage their return to their home local authority, where appropriate.

It was also explained to the Committee that work was being undertaken through the Selective Licensing programme, one of the objectives of which was to reduce the amount of cheap, readily available, poor quality accommodation in the private rental sector. He also advised Members of the work that was being undertaken in the town to improve public sector housing stock.

The Committee questioned whether Members’ ward budgets could be utilised to absorb some of the cost pressures relating to the budget for Community and Environmental Services. The Leader of the Council noted that Members’ ward budgets had recently been reduced and he considered that whilst some individual Members may wish to allocate their ward budgets in such a way, other Members had various other priorities, for which they would prefer to allocate funding.

Members noted the budgetary pressures for Community and Environmental Services, specifically in Transport for £60,000 due to the movement of the Shelters budget from Travel and Road Safety. The Committee raised questions regarding the level of income received from advertisements on bus shelters and the Leader of the Council confirmed that income was received from bus shelter advertisements, whilst Blackpool Transport Services received income from advertisements on buses and trams. However, it was acknowledged that the income target for advertisement revenue from bus shelters was ambitious in the current economic climate.

Members also raised questions in relation to Concessionary Fares and Mr Thompson advised that Blackpool had the highest take-up of concessionary fare NoW cards across Lancashire and Cumbria.

The Committee noted the impact of historic and in-year academy conversions on the level of Education Services Grant received and queried what the impact would be of recent government proposals to convert all schools to academies. The Leader of the Council considered that the only services that would be provided for academies would be the services for which academies were prepared to pay. He considered that the Council offered quality education services to schools that were priced at an appropriate level. However, there would inevitably be difficulties when competing on price with the private sector to provide services. He considered that the issue would create further difficulties in regards to overseeing school improvement in the town.

Members challenged the reasons for the reduction in Council Tax collection rate and the Leader of the Council advised that the principal cause was the introduction of the Council Tax Reduction Scheme. He provided the Committee with details of the work that was undertaken in order to recover debt and arrears.

The Committee agreed to request that in respect of reports detailing collection rates of Council Tax and Business Rates, information also be provided regarding the total cash amounts as well as the percentage collection rate.