To receive declarations of personal and prejudicial interest (if any) from Members/Officers in accordance with the provisions of the Members Code of Conduct adopted by Council from 1 September 2008 (including whipping declarations)

None.

The Scrutiny Officer presented a report, in order to outline the items due to be considered at the Committee’s meeting dated 29 March 2018, and seek confirmation of the information required for the subsequent scheduled meeting to be held on 30 April 2018. The report also itemised a list of potential Forward Work Programme (FWP) items for formal prioritisation and allocation to each of the Subject Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

Members discussed the FWP, and accepted the items allocated for future Committees as detailed in the report.

Members also requested an un-redacted copy of the Waste Contract from the Corporate Director Operational and Partnership Services, and requested that a confidential meeting of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee be convened following the Annual meeting of Council, to discuss the contract management issues within the Contract. Members also prioritised the Waste Services performance issues, to be scheduled at the June meeting of SOSC 3.

Invitees:

Cabinet and CMB

The Chairperson welcomed the Invitees to the meeting.

On behalf of Committee she expressed her disappointment over the fact that a specialist Finance Officer was not in attendance at the meeting, particularly as the item was a Budget Monitoring report

The Chief Executive advised that he would be able to answer queries Members had on the report, together with assistance from the Deputy Leader. He explained that the Interim Head of Finance had pre-booked annual leave for a planned holiday prior to her being employed by the Authority on a temporary basis. This was compounded by the fact that a number of other Finance Officers were on annual leave for half term. The Chief Executive apologised for this to Members.

A Member referred to paragraph 3.1 of the report and noted the fact that the capital programme for the year had reduced from a figure of £63.854m to £49.893m, so as to take into account new approvals and slippage of schemes into 2018-19. He asked for the reasons behind this, and queried why this was not an area of growth, rather than a slippage of capital monies.

The Chief Executive advised that any changes with regard to schemes included in the Capital Programme were reported to Council, and an explanation for such changes were given in the report (submitted to Council) at this time. Any such changes to allow for any new approvals and/or slippage of schemes were not necessarily picked up in the quarterly monitoring reports considered in respect of the Budget. Further information and explanation could be found in Section 4 of the report.

The Member whilst accepting the explanation, considered a slippage of around £14m to be a significant amount of money, and he felt that more explanation regarding changes to the Capital Programme should be included in the Quarter 4 Budget Monitoring report to Committee, as well as further examination of contingency funds being examined by Members at year end.

A Member asked what impact the Budget was having on staff reductions and vacancies.

The Chief Executive advised that the Authority used to have a freeze on the recruitment of posts, but due to more demand being put on himself and Directors to achieve savings required of them, a minimal number or no posts at all had been frozen in the Authority for some time. This was negated by some work slipping in terms of its priority in being completed, or staff having to become increasingly skilled to adapt to other areas of work aside of their core duties.

Though it appeared that there was an underspend across the Authority in the area of vacancy management, this was due to the fact that Directorates were continually having to look at achieving increased savings through carrying out Directorate re-structures. The Chief Executive added that whilst the re-structuring of Directorates was the responsibility of the appropriate Director, he as Chief Executive, also looked at any restructuring proposals from a corporate perspective.

A Member asked if there were any  ...  view the full minutes text for item 43.

To consider any item(s) of business in respect of which notice has been given in

accordance with Part 4 (paragraph 4) of the Council Procedure Rules and which the person presiding at the meeting is of the opinion should by reason of special circumstances be transacted at the meeting as a matter of urgency.

None.