Issue - meetings

The Cabinet Member for Finance and Health introduced the Budget Scrutiny Recommendations report.

The Committee were asked to agree a series of recommendations on the budget and MTFS, following their review by the individual scrutiny panels. The final recommendations from OSC would then be taken to Cabinet for consideration along with the final MTFS proposals which would then be put to Council on 26 February for approval. In response to the discussion of the report the following points were noted:

a.    In response to a query  around the number of properties in the borough that were in council tax bands G & H, officers advised that it was around 5500 which was about 5%. The Committee raised a further question around whether using differential council tax rates to subsidise council tax benefit was legal. In response, the Cabinet Member advised that he thought that it would be legal depending on how that change was implemented; such as the introduction of different categories within band levels. However, it was suggested that this would create additional administrative costs and that this was likely to be opposed by the current government. 

b.    In response to a question, officers confirmed that the  implementation of 3% increase in social care precepts would prevent the authority from increasing it the following year. The Cabinet Member advised that there was no information currently available from the government about the long-term possibilities of implementing a year-on-year increase.

c.    In response to a question around the General Fund reserves level, the Cabinet Member advised that the figure was around £14m in April 2017 and that this was impacted by the agreed use of £8.8m of reserves in the MTFS. However, this reduction was offset by a surplus in council tax collections of around £6m which resulted in General Fund reserve of around £12m. It was anticipated that reserves would be around £15m at the beginning of the financial year.

d.    In response to a query around the impact of employing agency staff on the overspend within the Children’s Services budget, the Cabinet Member advised that an improved recruitment and retention package had been implemented to make Haringey a more attractive place to work. However, it was still necessary to employ agency staff to fill gaps in the provision of a statutory service.

e.    The Cabinet Member advised that the costs from adoption and fostering services were monitored regularly by Cabinet.

f.     In response to a question around the new models of care saving, the Cabinet Member acknowledged that there was more work to do to achieve the £1m saving, and that the saving proposal was likely to involve some degree of shared service provision.

g.    In response to a query around the total saving position within P2, officers advised that the MTFS set out an agreed saving of £2.4m for 2018/19, which reflected an agreed reduction of around £800k from 2017/18. In addition, there was a carried forward budget pressure of around £3.5m for 2018/19 which would also need to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 57