Issue - meetings

[Report of the Director of Finance. To be introduced by the  Cabinet Member for Finance.]

The report sets out details of proposed budget for 2019/20 and MTFS to 2023/24, including savings, growth and capital proposals. The report will also set out details of provisional funding for 2019/20 and if available the remainder of the planning period and highlight areas of risk. The budget proposals will be released for public consultation and Scrutiny  consideration.

The Cabinet Member for Finance introduced this report which outlined the 2019/20 budget and the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) for 2019/20 – 2022/23. This was due to go out to consultation and be considered by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee from the 17^th December. It was anticipated that the revenue gap for 2019/20 would be £6.5m.The overspend reflected the impact of austerity and the reduction in one budget leading to an overspend in another area. Examples such as the cuts to children’s centres impacting on the budgets for children’s social care, and cuts to youth services leading to increases in costs in the criminal justice system illustrated this.

The Cabinet Member outlined the difficulty in cutting services where the demand was constant, such as in Adults Services and Children Services. Other local authorities shared the Council’s situation across the country and the Cabinet Member acknowledged the tough situation officers found themselves in when being instructed to make cuts in vital service areas, without creating negative consequences for residents.

The draft budget and MTFS would seek to reduce the Council’s spending in a way that increased income fairly and delivered efficiency savings, but the Cabinet Member acknowledged this was getting harder to achieve. Nevertheless, the majority of the proposals would be trying to achieve this and change the way in which the Council delivered its services.

The Cabinet Member highlighted the administration’s manifesto priorities which the budget sought to incorporate. This included certain changes such as increasing support for the delivery of youth services as it was recognised the importance of investing more Council resources into youth services programmes. There was a proposal to invest in a school meals pilot scheme. It was also a commitment of the administration to become a London Living Wage employer as everyone should be in receipt of a decent wage. The budget also reflected the commitment to extend the Council Tax Relief Scheme (CTRS) to 100% for the boroughs least well-off families, which would significantly assist single mothers. Finally, the recent announcement to remove the Housing and Revenue borrowing cap by the government was welcomed as it would support the administration in delivering its commitment to deliver at least 1,000 new council homes at council rents by 2022. This would help reduce the Council’s reliance on temporary accommodation which would save on costs.

The Cabinet Member concluded by accepting the difficult pressures faced by services with households coming to the Council with more needs as a result of welfare reduction and the rising housing costs.

Following questions by Cllr Morris, the following was noted:

• The Cabinet Member advised that Councils do not traditionally spend money on police and the Flexible Police resourcing scheme was a GLA scheme which the council signed up to and ends in March 2019. The reason for proposed discontinuation was that the government had indicated it would grant permission for the GLA to raise more funding through taxes for the police. This was thought to be approximately £24 per  ...  view the full minutes text for item 33