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.

Derbyn datganiadau o ddiddordeb personol a rhagfarnol (os o gwbl) gan Aelodau / Swyddogion yn unol â darpariaethau'r Cod Ymddygiad Aelodau a fabwysiadwyd gan y Cyngor o 1 Medi 2008.

The Interim Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer presented a report, in order to provide Members with an update on the Medium Term Financial Plan.

By way of background information, she explained that the draft MTFS which had been submitted to Cabinet on 20 November 2018 (attached at Appendix A to the report)had been significantly guided by the Council’s revised priorities of, Supporting a Successful Economy, Helping People to be more Self-Reliant and Making Smarter Use of Resources.

She referred to the Budget Narrative, which aimed to articulate the continued and significant investment in public services that the Council will make going forward. It also set out how the Council aims to change particular areas of service delivery and the financial consequences of this.

This Appendix then gave a financial overview, following which the Interim Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer gave a resume of how much budget is allocated to each of its key service areas of follows:-

·      Education

·      Social Care and Early Help

·      Public Realm

·      Supporting the Economy

·      Other Services

The Interim Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer confirmed that the Council’s MTFS was set within the context of UK economic and public expenditure plans, Welsh Government’s priorities and legislative programme.

She explained about the Welsh Government’s draft budget announced by the Finance Secretary on 2 October 2018, and how this affected local authorities in Wales including BCBC. Since then Central Government in its Autumn budget on 29 October, confirmed that Welsh Government will receive an extra £550m over the years 2018-19 to 2020-21.

The next section of the report’s attachment, advised what the above settlements meant for this Authority, which reflected for 2019-20 an overall reduction of £1.616m or -0.84%. Welsh Government also indicated that the settlement contained an additional £20m to ease pressures on Social Services. If this was also taken into account, the real position for Bridgend was a reduction of -1.3% or £2.5m. The settlement also included £2.5m floor funding to ensure that no Authority has to manage with a reduction of greater than 1% to its Revenue Support Grant next year.

Overall the provisional settlement was in line with the -1.5% “most likely” assumption that is contained within the Council’s original MTFS 2019-20, but it did not recognise a number of new pressures that the Council will have to meet.

The next section of the Appendix, outlined reasons why there was a need to combat financial pressures the Council have to face in the coming year, by having to consider an increase of 5.4% in Council Tax.

Paragraph 4.11 of the Appendix then showed in Table 1, a comparison of budget against projected outturn at 30 September 2019, that reflected a net underspend of £2.551m.

Table 2 in paragraph 4.17 of the Appendix, showed details of an MTFS proposal supported by Budget Reductions Contingency Reserve in 2018-19, which was in the sum of £200k for MREC.

The Appendix then gave an outline of the MTFS forecast for the next 4 years, showing that the Council would still be likely to achieve a budget reduction overall in each of these years of around -1.5%. This in real terms meant that over this period it would have to find a total of £33.645m on a ‘best case scenario’ or £44.648m for ‘worse case.’

Table 5 of the Appendix reflected the current position in addressing the most likely forecast budget reduction requirement of £36.439m. This showed that despite the savings made thus far, the Council were still required to develop proposals in order to achieve a further £21.3m in reductions (not yet accounted for).

The Interim Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer then made reference to the Budget Reduction Proposals identified in the current MTFS (Table 6 in the Appendix) and the Draft Revenue Budget as it presently stood (Table 7).

A full breakdown of budget pressures was shown at pages 43/44 of the overall report.

She confirmed that budget reduction proposals of £8.836m had been identified from service and corporate budgets to achieve a balanced budget. These were outlined in Appendix B of the Cabinet report.

Table 9 in paragraph 4.39 of the Appendix gave a summary of Usable Earmarked Reserves, whilst Table 10 showed Annual Allocations of Capital Funding.

The Interim Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer then concluded her submission by referring to the Well-Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 Assessment as were detailed in Appendix c to the attached report.

A Member noted that non-statutory public facing services had been the subject of some repeated cuts as part of the MTFS reductions over the last few years, and he noted that areas such as the following were going to be subjected to further cuts, in order to protect more statutory services provided by the Council:-

• Rationalising Play Areas
• Removal of Council subsidy in respect of certain bus routes
• Certain Street Cleaning services

In terms of street scrubbing, he also asked if any equipment that the local authority were going to dispose of could be passed to Town/Community Councils in order that they could provide this service.

The Interim Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer confirmed that she would raise these points with the Corporate Director – Communities and in turn, provide a written response to the Member outside of the meeting.

She did add however, that both statutory and non-statutory services that the Council provided, would be subject to budget cuts as part of the MTFS, and that every Directorate and most service areas of the Council would be required to face reductions.

The Chairperson in respect of Children’s Play Areas, confirmed that some of the larger statutory areas were not the subject of closure as these needed to be provided as part of the Public Realm. However, smaller areas had to be delegated to Town/Community Councils in order for them to choose whether or not to keep these open and to also maintain them up to the required standard.

With regard to bus services, he advised that there was no guarantee that commercial operators would carry on providing services along some routes (the less used ones) once the Council removed subsidies.

The Community Asset Transfer Officer advised that if the Council had surplus assets it could no longer continue providing due to financial restraints, then discussions could take place with the local Town/Community Council in order to ascertain whether or not they had any interest in taking over the responsibility of these.

A Member asked whether or not there was any intention of closing the Bridgend Bus Station due to there being limited resources to keep this facility open.

The Chairperson advised that no date had been set for the closure of this, though if the Council had no improved settlement from Welsh Government then this may need re-visiting, as it presently cost the Council in the region of £90k to operate.

The Interim Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer pointed out to Members, that certain preventative measures would be looked at in order hopefully not to overspend in statutory services, which would in turn possibly alleviate further cuts having to be made to certain public facing non-statutory services.

A Member felt that increased effort should be made between BCBC and Town/Community Councils through avenues of consultation, in order to provide some services collaboratively, including also through joint funding initiatives.

A Member advised that it was difficult timing wise for Town/Community Councils to set their precept at a level whereby they could assist the local authority in the above, when considering that they had to do this in November, prior to the date BCBC firmed-up its proposals in respect of the MTFS in December. The Council’s Budget was then established in February/March at Cabinet and Council, in any given year. The timings of the two therefore were untimely.

RESOLVED:                    That the Town and Community Council Forum noted the MTFS Strategy 2019/20 to 2022/23.