Agenda item

JOINT PERFORMANCE AND FINANCE REPORT

To receive the Joint Performance and Finance Report as submitted to Cabinet on 10 August, 2010, and identify issues for further review / monitoring by panels.

Minutes:

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Property, People and Governance and the Assistant Director for Finance, Assets and Efficiencies were in attendance to present the Joint Performance and Finance Report and respond to questions.  The Assistant Director commented that things had moved on since the report had been produced for the end of the first quarter (June 2010), highlighted the challenges faced across departments and identified the areas of focus for further savings.  This included within –

Services for Children and Young People

 

·        Transport

·        School Catering

·        Care Packages

·        Deletion of posts within Admin/Policy and Performance

Community Services

 

·        Learning Disability

·        Dependency on Residential Services (Drugs and Alcohol)

·        Care Packages (Older People)

Development and Regeneration

 

·        Car Parking Income Generation

·        Homelessness Prevention

 

Corporate Support

 

·        Single Point of Contact (SPOC)

·        Accommodation Strategy

·        Reducing Staff Costs

·        Contract negotiation

·        Audit Fee reduction

Members were advised that a lot of work was being done by officers throughout the Council to not only balance the books at the end of the year (i.e. addressing the £10m spending pressure) but to look at the bigger picture, ahead to 2013 and beyond.

In response to questions raised, the Board heard further that -

(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.

The Chair highlighted the importance of the scorecards being received and scrutinised by individual panels.

The Board welcomed the format and presentation of the report which was now much easier to understand, wished the Assistant Director well on balancing the budget, and thanked him and the Cabinet Member for their attendance.

Supporting documents: