(i)

£4m of in-year reductions had been assessed as necessary as a result of Government action, this was in addition to the £6m already identified as being required from within Children’s Services and Adult Social Care;

(ii)

if nothing was done to address the budget difficulties the Council would have a deficit of £30m by 2013;

(iii)

the Comprehensive Spending Review due in October was also expected to have a significant impact upon the Council’s finances;

(iv)

the current economic climate already highlighted Plymouth as the 13^th hardest hit City in the country and this position could significantly worsen should the Dockyard incur deep cuts or closure;

(v)

though facing troubling times, the Council was in a good starting position, a fact which had been highlighted through receipt of the Municipal Journal’s ‘Best Achieving Council of the Year’ Award 2010;

(vi)

City and Council priorities were being reduced from 14 to four and, whilst they would continue to form the basis of performance management arrangements for the Council, they would also play a more significant role in resource allocation and represent a tighter focus for the improvement agenda in times of diminishing revenue and capital resources;

(vii)

there was already movement in the City towards integrated planning and service provision with health and police partners, this work would continue through the evolvement of the Plymouth Report, a document which had been produced on which the Council and partner agencies could base service planning;

(viii)

future challenges ahead in respect of partnership working included –

• establishment of Local Economic Partnerships
• replacement of health and adult social care overview and scrutiny functions with Health and Wellbeing Boards
• directly elected police commissioners
• greater autonomy for schools
• services provided by the Council were democratically driven whilst partner services were not

(ix)

whilst the immediate focus remained on trying to address in-year pressures, the Council was also looking ahead to how it would deal with changing legislation, one example being the return of responsibility for public health to local authorities.  Given the financial pressures faced by the health service and Derriford in particular, the Council would have many tough decisions to take and political maturity would be required; 

(x)

a date for announcing the outcome of the Government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review was not yet known but it was anticipated that it would be on or around 20 October, the same as the Treasury’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).  The Leader had written to the Ministry of Defence to apply pressure on the City’s behalf and a response to this letter was awaited;

(xi)

the Council  ...  view the full minutes text for item 33.

(i)

the Council had not agreed with all of the points raised by Ofsted as a result of its inspection of Children’s Services, however, it had undertaken significant since and now had the second best performing Children’s Services in the country;

(ii)

although Local Area Agreements had disappeared, the Council would continue to measure performance against targets;

(iii)

whilst the Plymouth City Development Company had now ceased operating, it had achieved a number of positive outcomes and the Council would be working with the Chamber of Commerce to see how these could be picked up;

(iv)

the Council had recently approved the next phase of the Accommodation Strategy and would now be focusing on three core office accommodation bases at the Civic Centre, Windsor House and Midland House.  Implementing this phase of the Strategy would require a capital investment and a ‘one-off’ revenue cost which would generate ongoing revenue savings of £1.5m per annum (the first ‘invest to save’ initiative to be put into place to address the revenue budgetary pressures);

(v)

Cabinet appreciated the role of scrutiny and recognised its ability to impact upon services and service provision e.g. monitoring progress of the Accommodation Strategy and undertaking a review into Teenage Pregnancy.

(vi)

local authorities were under pressure to recycle more and, as a result, landfill taxes were rising.  Whilst Torbay had taken the decision to completely revamp its collection service in order to recycle more products the question to be asked was ultimately one of cost.  The cost of increasing the amount of recycled produce, its collection and the cost of separation, had to be balanced against the cost of collection and disposal to landfill.  Any changes to Plymouth’s collection services and recycling targets would be a political decision;

(vii)

a business case was being prepared in regard to provision of a kerbside glass collection, again this would very much depend on the costs involved;

(viii)

establishment of a waste-to-energy plant in the City would help address reducing the Council’s reliance on landfill, however, this was still some time away and, unfortunately, the process could not be brought forward any quicker.

(ix)

the number of properties within Council ownership that were not DDA compliant and the amount it would cost to make them so; and

(x)

the increase in landfill tax;

(i)

the increase in costs within Services for Children and Young People was largely due to the number of children taken into care which had risen year on year by 12 per cent;

(ii)

in the past other departments had suffered as a consequence of budgetary pressures within Children’s Services, however, the Council had to focus on what was important to the City as a whole and now that there were four priorities instead of 14 the £30m of cuts required over the next three years would carefully consider these priorities;

(iii)

the Council had spent more capital investment on schools in 2009/10 than it had ever done.  There was a good working balance within the Capital Delivery Programme and this would be protected;

(iv)

the Transformational Change programme had been scaled down and the Corporate Management Team would be looking at what was required in moving forward to address the challenging budget position;

(v)

procurement was being looked at across the council as a whole under the invest to save policy;

(vi)

the Council had a £1m reserve to fund the cost of redundancies;

(vii)

the £350,000 allocated to the Plymouth City Development Company had been reabsorbed within the Development and Regeneration directorate;

(viii)

following the separation of the Council’s housing element to Plymouth Community Homes, the entire cost of Prince Rock Depot now fell to Street Services.  A review of the Council’s vehicle fleet was under way under the invest to save scheme and it was hoped that the cost of fleet vehicles could be managed down;

(ix)

none of the monies received from the sale of Plymouth Citybus had yet been spent, it was all still in the bank earning interest.

(i)

at the request of the Chair of the Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Panel, a revised version of their report was tabled which would supersede that which had been circulated with the agenda;

(ii)

reports were not consistent in the way that Members were addressed (this related to the section of the reports reflecting Members’ attendance where sometimes councillors’ initials were used and sometimes not and sometimes Mrs. was used and sometimes not).

(1)

there should be consistency in the way Members were addressed across all reports;

(2)

the format and content of the quarterly reports be reviewed.  Panel Chairs, in liaison with Lead Officers, to work toward developing a new and interesting format and style for future reports, examples of which to be trialled when the next quarterly updates were due.