Meeting documents

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the meeting held on 1 December 2016, copy attached as an appendix.

RESOLVED –

That the Minutes of the meeting held on 1 December 2016 be approved as a correct record.

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Andrew Small (01296) 585507

Cabinet had considered its initial budget proposals on 13 December 2016.  The report submitted to that meeting, and which was included as an appendix to the Committee report) set out the high level issues facing the Council when developing the budget proposals for 2017/18 and beyond.  Due to the timing of scrutiny meetings, these proposals were being reported to this scrutiny meeting.

Following the Government’s announcements in late December regarding the draft Grant Settlement 2017/18 for Councils and on other significant issues such as the future of New Homes Bonus, Cabinet had further honed its proposals and an updated set of budget proposals would be reported to the Cabinet meeting to be held on 10 January, 2017.  That report together with the updated Medium Term Financial Plan was also included as an appendix to the agenda.

The Scrutiny Committee had been requested to review the budget proposals for 2017/18 and identify comments and feedback to be reported verbally to Cabinet on 10 January 2017, for its consideration in making recommendations to Council on the final budget proposals for 2017/18.

The key budget proposals that Cabinet was being asked to recommend to Council were:-

·                    to increase Council Tax by £5.00 for a Band D property, equivalent to a 3.59% increase from 1 April 2017.  This was the maximum allowable for lower tier councils.  The Government had assumed that each council would make maximum allowable increases and had reduced the amount of Grant awarded to Councils by an equivalent amount.

·                    to take into budget planning the £2.2m of savings, as detailed in paragraphs 4.6 – 4.8 and Appendix C of the 13 December 2016 report to Cabinet.

·                    to approve the budget for 2017/18 and the Medium Term Financial Plan, as set out in summary form in the table at Appendix A of the 10 January 2017 report to Cabinet.

·                    to approve Aylesbury Special Expenditure totalling £845,000 supported by a precept of £45.00, which again represented a Council Tax freeze for Special Expenses (as set out in Appendix F of the 10 January 2017 report to Cabinet).

·                    to agree the proposed fees and charges as set out in Appendix F of the 10 January 2017 report to Cabinet.

The Cabinet reports also included information on:-

Government Grant Update

The draft Grant settlement for 2017/18 had been announced on 15 December, 2016, in which the Government had largely honoured the commitments within the 4 year settlement and left the pre-announced Grant numbers mostly unchanged.  Importantly, the Revenue Support Grant and Baselined Business Rates settlements were identical to those announced last year for 2017/18.

The only significant change had been to the Business Rates Tariff (the proportion of the locally collected Business Rates paid to Central Government).  This figure would need to change to reflect the Business Rates revaluation, effective 1 April 2017, which would see a change (both positive and negative) to the business rates income collected by Councils.  To ensure councils did not gain nor lose through this national re-basing exercise the net  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

To consider the report attached as an appendix.

Contact Officer:  Andrew Small (01296) 585507

The Council maintained an integrated strategic capital programme which was divided into three sections.

·                    Major Projects – These being the largest and highest profile.

·                    Housing Schemes – Being the housing enabling and housing grant based schemes.

·                    Other Projects – Being all the other schemes included within the capital programme.

The programme was reviewed annually with the current programme being last approved and adopted at Council in November 2015.

Cabinet considered a report on the 13 December 2016 on the capital programme for the current year, as well as for the updated programme for 2017/18 onwards.  The report provided an updated position with respect to forecast receipts and the position with regards to current and future major investment projects.  It also incorporated changes made since November 2015 and reflected these in the overall resources projections.

Members requested further information and were informed:-

(i)            that the memorandum of understanding with Silverstone regarding the Heritage Experience had still not been finalised.  It was confirmed that the Heritage Centre had secured the £9.3m Heritage Lottery funding applied for, however, the advance counted as a capital expenditure for accounting purposes and had to be included within the capital programme review.

(ii)           that the business case for the Silverstone Heritage Experience had not been dependant on retaining the F1 FP.  These figures had also been checked by the National Lottery prior to awarding the lottery funding.

(iii)          on the circumstances of the provision of a loan facility for £5.2m to an entity to enable them to secure a commercial property in Aylesbury.

(iv)         more fully on the treatment of New Homes Bonus as part of the capital programme accounting process.

(v)          that the cost for the scheme to develop the existing waste and recycling depot site at Pembroke Road would be £9.2m, of which £1.9m would only be required if there was sufficient evidence of the demand and take up for the expanded vehicle testing facilities.  Additionally, there was a £3.6m provision for refuse vehicle replacements.

RESOLVED –

(1)          That the updated capital programme for 2017/18, as set out in Appendix A of the Cabinet report, be endorsed.

(2)          That Cabinet be asked to consider the points raised at (i) – (v) above in making final recommendations to Council to set a capital budget for 2017/18.

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Andy Barton (01296) 585430

Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), came into force on 5 April 2011. The objective behind the duty was to ensure that consideration of equality issues formed part of the routine, day-to-day decision making and operational delivery of public authorities. In summary, it required that the District Council, in the exercise of its functions, had due regard to the need to:

·                    eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by or under the Equality Act.

·                    advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not by:

o        Removing or minimising disadvantage that people in the protected groups suffer because its connected to that protected characteristic

o        Take steps to meet the needs of people from the protected groups where these differ to those of other people

o        Encourage participation from protected groups in public life or other activity where their participation was disproportionately low

·                     foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not by:

o        Tackling prejudice.

o        Promoting understanding.

The protected characteristics were age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity status, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation.

Following the introduction of the Equalities Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011, the Council had published a statement in 2012 on how the Council was meeting the Public Sector Equality Duty.  The regulations were designed to ensure that public bodies were transparent about their compliance with the Equality Duty. And, by publishing information about their equality performance and objectives, public bodies would be accountable to the people and communities they served.

The Committee received a report which provided an assessment (Appendix 1) of the Council’s performance against the Public Sector Equality Duty and which had been updated in light of the Council’s performance assessment for 2016, and also demonstrated that AVDC was complying with the general Equality Duty.  This included information about the population of the District, information about Council staff and what AVDC was doing to meet the equality duty.  The information would be considered by Cabinet on 10 January 2017, with a view to publishing an updated Public Sector Equality Duty statement on how AVDC was continuing to meet its statutory duty.

A full review against the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty to re-evaluate all of the work that was done by the Council was currently being undertaken, and a status update on this progress was included in Section 3 of the report.  It was expected that the full report would be completed early in 2017.

Following consideration of the report, it was –

RESOLVED –

(1)          That AVDC’s Equality Report and performance for 2016 be noted.

(2)          That a further report on equalities be submitted to scrutiny when the full review against the requirements of the Public Sector Equality Duty had been completed.

To consider the future work programme.  Meetings are scheduled as follows:-

6 February, 2017 – Quarterly Finance Digest, Vale Commerce Business Plan.

4 April, 2017 – Treasury Management Strategy.

10 July, 2017 – No items as yet

The Committee considered the work programme for the period up until July 2017.

The list of updated agenda items for future meetings would be:

(i)            6 February 2017 – Quarterly Finance Digest.

(ii)           4 April 2017 – Treasury Management Strategy, Vale Commerce Business Plan

(iii)          10 July 2017 – Quarterly Finance Digest.

RESOLVED –

(1)          That the meeting scheduled for 6 February 2017 be cancelled (with the Quarterly Finance Digest for April-December 2016 to be circulated separately to Members in due course when it had been finalised).

(2)          That the work programme for the April and July 2017 meetings be agreed, as discussed at the meeting.