The Leader of the Council has been invited to attend this
session.
Minutes:
The Chairman welcomed the Leader of the Council to the meeting and invited him to outline his thoughts on the Council’s financial position and other key issues in view of the imminent announcement of the Local Government Finance Settlement and following the Corporate Spending Review, announced by the Chancellor earlier in the year.
Arising from discussion, the following points made by the Leader were noted:
Localism Bill
·
The abolition of the Standards Board for
·
The new system for directly elected mayors was
radical and would almost certainly have an impact on the relationship between
the County and the City, though it was felt that this could be a positive
impact;
·
The new planning system which placed communities
at the heart of decision making in place of top-down targets was welcomed;
·
Community empowerment was an important issue,
though it would be the Council’s job to engage the public to take full
advantage of the powers contained in the Bill and ‘enable’ this transition to
take place;
·
The Bill recognised the importance of business
rates as making a key contribution to the degree by which local authorities
could become self-sufficient in the future;
· There was a clear role for ‘backbench’ members to engage volunteers and encourage their involvement in providing services as part of the Big Society agenda. It was important that the Council ensured that Voluntary Action LeicesterShire delivered its contracted obligations, given the funding of nearly £1 million;
·
The Big Society agenda was seen as underpinning
much of the Localism Bill. The Bill would enable communities to take control of
services, though it was acknowledged that Leicestershire was a varied landscape
and different communities would require different levels of support to utilise
their new powers;
·
The Community Forums were seen to have a good
future. Though there were some initial difficulties, they were now perceived to
be a positive engagement tool for the Council and its partners. It was
acknowledged that much of their ‘success’ could be as a result of the £20,000
per Forum participatory budget allocation;
· The Community Infrastructure Levy could cause some concern for some local authorities. However, it would enable local authorities to raise funds from developers undertaking new building projects in their area. The money could then be used to fund a wide range of infrastructure that was needed as a result of development;
·
It was hoped that the Commission would agree to
continue the Review Panel, following its
interim report on operation of The Big Society in the New Year, in order to
look at the Bill and the Green Paper on ‘Modernising Commissioning’;
·
The Leader was apposed to a return to the
committee system in Leicestershire County Council.
Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR)
·
The Council was only marginally worse off as a
result of the Local Government Settlement.
As had been anticipated, the Council would have to make savings in the
order of £100 million over five years, of which in excess of £50 million would
be from efficiency savings, with a further figure of about £50 million expected
to be saved as a result of service reductions;
·
The additional £640 million earmarked by the
Government to keep Council Tax at 0% for the next year was welcomed. It was a challenging environment, but not one
which could be described as significantly detrimental, as it was expected that
the Authority would come through this period without a significantly negative
impact generally on the quality of service provision;
·
The Council would see an average reduction in
Formula Grant of 9.9% in 2011/12 and 7.3% in 2012/13;
·
The administration would keep to its promise of
no Council Tax increases for two years.
It was looking at all avenues in order to make further savings,
including automatic salary increments and senior staff pay. The Governments commitment, of making
financial support available to Councils which achieved a 0% Council Tax
increase was to be welcomed;
·
In response to the comment that Overview and
Scrutiny Committees did not have sufficient information to scrutinise the MTFS,
the Leader asked members to raise specific issues with him in an effort to
overcome this. Members would, as in previous years, receive updates via the
Members’ Information Service in relation to responses from the Director of
Corporate Resources to media queries;
·
The Cabinet had yet to pursue the possible use
of cash reserves to alleviate some of the financial pressures, though it was
happy to receive advice on this in the future;
·
It was felt that the Government had “woken up
late” to the redistribution of business rates. Specific grants were unknown at
this stage though the £6.4 million of NHS funding to support social care and
benefit health was welcomed;
·
The Council would still be spending in the
region of £3.5 billion in the next five years. It was acknowledged that the
transition period for those on the receiving end of cuts would be difficult and
that they must be given as much help as possible to cope.
Community Budgeting
·
The scope of this work was still under
development. It was hoped that this work would go beyond helping families with
complex needs, allowing the Council and its partners to prevent families
becoming in need. The issues of
addressing worklessness also merited consideration
for the purposes of community budgeting;
·
With regard to governance, the Public Service
Board model was seen as a way forward for some of this work. The Council hoped
to be in a position to work with partners to take decisions in one place on
issues such as commissioning. The
Council and partners would have to become more ‘seamless’ and this was likely
to involve the transfer of resources between agencies. Pooling of budgets and co-location of service
planning staff was crucial to the development of affective amalgamation of
services, as had already been the case with the PCT in regard to the joint commissioning
of certain services;
·
The Coalition Government was enabling local
authorities to have a greater say in the way services were run. It appeared to be very receptive to good ideas
from local authorities and pragmatic solutions in response to the funding
pressures were welcomed and it was a challenge to this and all other councils
to respond in a positive manner;
·
It was important for the Government to take
steps to ensure a high level Ministerial group with the task of driving the community
budgeting initiative forward;
· The Community Budget proposals could result in some restructuring of the County Council and its departmental structures.
RESOLVED:
That the discussion with the Leader of the Council and the points outlined above be noted.