(a)

Councillors Ball, Churchill and Rickets had called the decision in for the following reasons -

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the decision was outside of the budget because the monies, or part of, were being taken out of the Council’s general fund;

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the process by which the decision was made was deficient because Members were not properly consulted;

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the decision maker failed to consider alternative courses of action; the report under the heading ‘alternative options considered and rejected’ stated ‘none’;

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the decision maker failed to take into account relevant factors; that the report was contradictory because the proposal supported the roll out of life skills programmes to help teach the young people of Plymouth to understand the value of money and promote the importance of money and savings, however the proposal would cost £50,000 in 2014/15 and would be funded from the general reserves; this did not represent sound financial management;

(b)

Councillors Ball, Churchill and Rickets considered that –

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the decision was reckless as the monies to fund the scheme would be drawn from the Council’s reserves which was not a financially sound decision;

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to give young people money to set up a savings plan was not the best method of educating them in order to become financially responsible;

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constituents were not happy with the Council’s decision as numerous complaints had been received;

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alternative options had not been explored such as match funding from the credit unions;

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they were unable to justify the decision to the hard working families of Plymouth;

(d)

Councillor Lowry (Cabinet Member for Finance), Councillor Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Co-operatives, Housing and Community Safety) and David Northey (Head of Corporate Strategy) responded that -

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the  aim of ‘Starter-4-ten’ scheme was to teach young people the value and importance of money and savings, whilst promoting the services provided by the credit unions; the intention was to ensure awareness of alternatives to loan sharks and pay day lenders;

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the scheme related to all eligible year seven students and provided them with an opportunity to open a credit union savings account in the Autumn term 2014; it was proposed that the Council would give each child a voucher for £10 as a deposit, in order to start a savings plan; in addition, provided the child still had a minimum balance of £10 after 12 months, the Council would give each child a further £10 to top up the savings plan;

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there were 2,500 year seven students eligible for the scheme;

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as part of the delegated decision relating to the early intervention and prevention assistance from the emergency and welfare fund, published in March 2014, approval had been given to establish a children’s credit union savings scheme; the scheme had been set up for all eligible year 11 students to open a credit union savings account; the Council would give each student a £10 voucher to deposit.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 93.