(a)

the primary purpose of the report was to detail how the Council was delivering against its financial measures using its capital and revenue resources, to approve relevant budget variations and virements and report new schemes approves in the capital programme;

(b)

the estimated revenue overspend was £2.097m; the overall forecast net spend equated to £195.106m against a budget of £193.009m which was a variance of 1.1%; this needed to be read within the context of needing to deliver £21m of savings in 2015/16 on the back of balancing the 2014/15 revenue budget where £16m of net revenue reductions had been successfully delivered;

(c)

the latest approved capital programme funding envelope which covered 2014/15 to 2017/18 stood at £237.406m which had been approved at Full Council on 23 February2015;

(d)

the report, for the first time, outlined information on the Plymouth Integrated fund;

(e)

additional management solutions and escalated actions to deliver further savings from the Council’s transformation programme would be brought for consideration over the coming months.

(e)

the enhanced voluntary release scheme which had been formally offered to staff within customer services prior to the restructure, would result in staff being able to leave the authority without having to work their notice but still being paid for it;

(f)

the staff take-up of the enhanced voluntary release scheme within customer services had been good; this had negated the need to make staff compulsory redundant;

(g)

an undertaking was provided that further information would be provided regarding the anticipated level of funding that would be achieved through waste services;

(h)

an undertaking was given to seek the views of the Cabinet Member for Finance relating to the identification of funding sources for the capital programme projects;

(i)

the delay in the reviews of business support, HR and Finance service provision would result in these areas not achieving the target saving for this financial year of £0.8m; it was anticipated that a saving of £0.160m would be achieved; the delay had been partly due to the change in Assistant Director level within Finance and HR;

(j)

the plans for transformation required a significant investment in terms of both staff and other resources; it was the intention to mainstream transformation over time, however during the initial period there was no expectation that this would be delivered as part of ‘business as usual’; the budget had been set up to allow the benefits from the programme to be placed where they would be realised (the GAME project had been included with the Place Directorate).

(1)

highlighted pressures in People department to be considered by Ambitious Plymouth and Caring Plymouth dependant on their terms of reference;

(2)

request that monitoring report identifies funding sources for capital programme projects.