To receive any declarations of
interest. Members are advised to consider the advice contained
within the Declaration of Interest advice attached to this Agenda.
If a Member declares an interest, they should complete theDeclaration of Interest
Form
To approve the Minutes of the
Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 24 November 2020, copy
attached.
Minutes:
CouncillorPaul Moore proposed, Councillor Coleman-Cooke seconded and Members
agreed the minutes as a correct record of the Panel meeting held on
24 November 2020.
Tim Willis, Deputy Chief Executive & S151
Officer introduced the report and made the following points:
·
The proposed budget was drafted in the context of significant
changes on local government financing;
·
Covid-19 had forced local authorities to focus on short term
issues. This had drained the council reserves, council finances and
council staff reserves;
·
The budget gap in the proposals was largely due to factors internal
to the council like pay and contractual inflation an increase in
cost of waste disposal;
·
There were some projected reductions in government grants;
·
Any Panel recommendations to amend the budget that have a cost or
reduced income would need to be matched with an identified funding
source;
·
A correction to paragraph 13.6.1 to the cabinet report – the
increase in average rent between this year and next year is
£1.98 not £1.89 as reported.
Members made comments and asked questions as
follows:
Members thanked Mr Willis and his
finance team for the work done particularly the hosting of briefing
sessions for Members;
57% of the residents surveyed were
surprised at the amount of money that went to the council of the
council tax;
At paragraph 13.7 there were
adjustments made for the HRA between the accounting basis and
funding basis there is a difference of nearly half a million. What
was the basis for that and was there material impact from it?
At paragraph 11.7 (HRA – Major
Repairs Reserve); the table indicates that it was £15.5
million as at 31 March 2020, but will be drawn down to leave
£384k by 31 March 2022. Was it a prudent decision to reduce
the reserves and was it also prudent to leave such a small amount
in the reserves?
In the same table there was also a
movement in 2021/22 of £7.676million, but at Annex 3 it was
suggested that £11.986million will be used from the Major
Repairs Reserve. Could this be clarified?
S151 Officer’s view is
reported as taking the middle position regarding the budget
position to take. What would have the budget looked like had the
S151 Officer taken a pessimistic view?
Why was it that in paragraph 16
Table 9, one bedroom social rent average was indicated as being
higher than affordable rent?
Can the council not use the
£3million in the reserves to offset loss in income for not
increasing the rent?
Mr Willis responded as follows:
This adjustment of £479K was
required in order to show the complete picture within the HRA. This
was to reflect different valuations of assets within the HRA;
This adjustment did not have a
material impact on the overall bottom line as to what rent income
required;
A more comprehensive explanation
would be provided after the meeting;
The council was using a substantial
amount of the Major Repairs Reserve to fund the significant
investment plan for the HRA stock, in particular the refurbishment
of the tower blocks. There will be also be slippages of the capital
works as well to consider;
Hannah Thorpe, Director of Communications led
the discussion with a slides presentation and made the following
comments:
The Corporate Performance report was
due to be refreshed in 2020-21 to link in with the council’s
new Corporate Statement. Due to significant pressures on the team
to support the council’s response to the coronavirus
pandemic, a new approach to corporate performance and new
indicators would now be implemented from 1 April 2021;
As a result, the council’s
corporate performance for 2020-21 is to be measured in line with
the former Corporate Plan (using the existing indicators and
targets);
There is evidence of council
performance being impacted as a result of the pandemic and having
to redirect resources - green measures have fallen by two and red
measures have risen by 2. In the current context however this is
not as significant as it potentially could have been and is
testament to the hard work of the council in very challenging
times;
Within the covering report, a
commentary has been provided for each indicator which is below
target (red), as these are the areas which require focus;
Ms Thorpe provided a summary of the
results by each priority area; a clean and welcoming environment,
supporting neighbourhoods, promoting inward investment and job
creation and statistical information;
Ms Thorpe apologised for an error in
the statistical information section regarding the number of
starters and leavers, confirming the figures should state there had
been 50 starters and 31 leavers, which would mean a net increase of
19 staff;
Ms Thorpe drew the panel’s
attention to the improved performance of the council regarding its
response time to FOIs which has moved from significantly below
target to within reach of the target and also to the homelessness
indicators which have continued to be met despite significant
pressure on the team.
Members made comments and asked questions as
follows:
Missed bin collections showing as
red – under current circumstances (with covid) a missed collection rate of 0.34% would be
unfair to record it as red. It was actually quite good
performance;
Incidents of dumped rubbish on
council land had gone up from 134 to 234. Was that due to KCC
charging the type of waste being dumped?
Action to improve living conditions
was low. What were the prospects for that figure being improved in
the future?
The time taken to reduce
homelessness was impressive;
On the target regarding the number
of people in employment – When was that measured and how soon
would the Panel get the next figures for that indicator, would help
the Panel understand the full impact of covid?
Who sets the target for recycling?
Was it the government or TDC? Given the current worries
particularly about plastic recycling, could the target be
raised?
How many respondents would be in the
residents’ survey and how were they selected?
Had the response rate increased in
the lockdown and what were the main areas of concern registered by
residents?
Proposals for new look corporate performance reporting format
Members to receive a slides presentation on this
item.
Minutes:
Hannah Thorpe and Nathaniel Fisher, Business
Analyst led the discussion with a slides presentation and made the
following comments:
The new approach would link
corporate performance monitoring to the current corporate
objectives which are Growth, Environment and Community;
This would also focus on what
matters most to residents and the process would be more transparent
and engaging;
Performance indicators would be
reduced from the current numbers whilst improving the quality of
the data. The data would be more contextual;
Most of the reporting would be live
data on the council website, which residents can track easier as
the information would be available to the public 24 hours each day.
This would help demonstrate that the council was achieving what it
had set out to do in the corporate objectives;
Officers would like to report back
to the Panel before 1 April in order to share the more concrete new
framework for performance reporting.
Councillor Bayford
summed up discussion then proposed, Councillor Coleman-Cooke
seconded and Members agreed the following:
1.
Officers were going to send around the slides presentation to all
the members of the Overview and Scrutiny Panel, for Members to give
feedback comments about the new approach;
2.
Final proposals were going to be presented at a future Panel
meeting before 1 April 2021.
Councilor Stuart
Piper, Chair of the Memorials Working Party led the discussion and
gave the update as follows:
The working party was joined in the
discussions by a member of the public;
Members agreed to seek some lessons
from other council that have had to address similar issues,
including from Liverpool City Council;
On 17 January 2021, Community
Secretary Robert Jenrick announced a
change in law to protect public monuments;
The Secretary said that the public
should have a chance to be consulted on such matters, before
statues and monuments were removed;
Thoughtful considerations should be
given before such decisions were made to remove status and
monuments from public view;
When coming with its own policy, the
council would always need to use the proper process when making
future decision on statues and monuments;
The new law would require that any
future decisions to remove heritage monuments, would need to go
through the planning process and public consultation in accordance
with the constitution of the local council;
The Secretary of Communities would
retain the right of veto power on such decisions, which could used
to overrule any local decisions;
The working party was now waiting
for the lead officer to draft the policy document for review by
Members before reporting back to the Panel.
Mr Porter introduced the item and made the
following points:
Since the transition, a number of
liaison meetings with tenants and leaseholders had been held which
the portfolio holder had attended;
The new service was 15 weeks into
the new in house arrangement and the team was settling in
well;
There were 58 posts in the new
structure. Of that number only three were covered by agency staff
and another one would be going out for recruitment;
Twenty eight of the fifty eight
posts came from East Kent Housing, with the remaining ones being
new recruitments;
New contact arrangements, including
new email details for the service had been introduced and shared
with every tenant and leaseholder;
A newsletter with a fridge magnet
that contained all details including telephone numbers was sent out
in the first week of the service;
New generic neighbourhood housing
officers had been introduced to the service. This was something
that tenants and leaseholders had always wanted;
The service has had to deal a lot
with legacy issues, but relatively few new complaints;
This could be a reflection that the
new contact arrangements set up were effective in addressing issues
as they arose;
The first report of the new services
included a position statement, health and safety report and
performance data for the first two months of the service;
With regards to the health and
safety update, the council had meetings regularly with the
regulator for social housing. The regulator agreed the
council’s voluntary undertaking and action plan (that covers
the period up to April 2021), relating to tenant and leaseholder
health and safety matters;
The council hoped to have an East
Kent Audit Partnership review conducted in May to assess the new
position on health and safety. This would then be reported to the
regulator in June, hoping to then get the regulatory notice on the
council removed;
Gas Safety – The current
position was now very positive. There was one resident who was
refusing to give engineers access to the property. The council was
currently working with other agencies to resolve that issue;
Electrical compliance – the
performance figures were quite low at when the new service started.
The team had since carried out a line by line review of the data of
all of the certificates for domestic and communal areas and the
work was due to be completed in December 2020. The work had since
been completed. The level of compliance had increased;
The service would be reporting
quarterly to the OSP and Cabinet. The council would continue to
report to the regulator monthly on health and safety matters;
The capital programme – a
significant amount of slippage was anticipated from this year to
next year, as 13% of allocated amount had been spent as at 1
October 2020. The team was working on correcting some coding in a
number of capital expenditure areas against revenue codes;