Issue - meetings

To consider the following Part 1 Decisions of the Executive taken on Wednesday 10 June 2020.

Executive                                                                                                      Page No.

Agenda Item No.

2          Minutes of the Executive – 13 May 2020                                                     3

3          Coronavirus Recovery Plan - Review of the Medium Term

           Financial Strategy and Impact of Covid-19 on the Council’s

General Fund Revenue Budget                                                         9

4          Corporate Performance – Quarter Four 2019/20                           43

Notice of Decisions to follow

PLEASE BRING YOUR AGENDA AND REPORTS FOR THE EXECUTIVE MEETING HELD ON 10 JUNE 2020

The Committee considered the decisions on the following matters arising from the Executive meeting held on 10 June 2020.

Minutes of the Executive – 13 May 2020

Noted.

Coronavirus Recovery Plan – Review of the Medium Term Financial Strategy and Impact of Covid-19 on the Council’s General Fund Revenue Budget

1.          Theme: Financial position including consideration of Section 114 Notice

Response – The report to the June 2020 Executive set out a number of measures that were recommended to improve the resilience of the General Fund balances that were agreed by the Executive.  This held or stopped some spend and diverted the use of receipts to ensure that if there was no more funding to be given by the Government, the General Fund could, after taking these measures absorb that cost.  These measures, whilst not ideal, mean the General Fund could meet a £4.8Million cost of COVID in 2020/21. These measures were to be reviewed at the end of September, thus negating the need to issue a S114 notice, as balances would be sufficient on the central scenario.

The report also set out further measures which would further improve the Council’s financial position and this included:

·     a future report on the disposal of land and assets identified as part of the Locality reviews to minimise the use of revenue contributions to capital;

·     to get under way the transformation agenda to help identify savings through new ways of working;  

·     setting aside any 2019/20 pilot gains up to the level of 2020/21 NDR gains of £1Million which may be lost as a result of the impact of COVID-19 and assumed in the current year to be realised; and

·     approve the development over the summer of a priority list of services as a further precautionary measure,  if losses and the impact of COVID-19 is financially greater than modelled.

These further measures should help the future resilience of the General Fund but it is very much going to be dependent on the depth of any recession, support from central government, changes to future LG funding models and the impact of the pandemic is monitored on a monthly basis.

In reply to supplementary questions, the Strategic Director (CF) stated:

·     it would be her duty (as Section 151 Officer) to raise the issue of a potential Section 114 Notice should the Council reach a position where it had insufficient resources to meet its in-year financial commitments;

·     there was now an additional step in the process, whereby the Section 151 Officer was required to inform the Government if the above situation occurred;

·     should a Section 114 Notice be issued, then the Council would only be able to fund essential spend.  There was also the possibility that the Government would appoint commissioners to oversee the running of the Council (as happened recently in the case of Northamptonshire County Council; and

·     the issue of a Section 114 Notice was seen as an action of last resort.

2.          Theme: Service prioritisation

Response - The report contained a number of resilience  ...  view the full decision text for item 3.