Meeting documents

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the meeting held on 2 July 2019, copy attached as an appendix.

RESOLVED –

That the Minutes of the meeting held on 2 July, 2019, be approved as a correct record.

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Andy Barton (01296) 585062

The Committee received a report, following on from a request made at the July 2019 meeting, which updated and explained to Members how staff retention, recruitment and the use of agency staff was being managed.  This included a breakdown of the financial impacts in different Service areas.

The Council had used agency and temporary staff as a long standing and vital part of its resourcing approach.  They were used to address short term and temporary needs, bolster resources in peak times and for particular types of cyclical work (such as annual canvass and events).  This ran alongside the use of consultants who were used to bring in additional (normally technical) resource to help with the Council’s normal business.  All of these types of temporary resource, were used in a controlled and planned way, and were therefore a normal part of the operation.

In recent years there had been a peak of use of agency and temporary staff linked to the change programme where, in effect, a significant level of agency and temp staff had been used to help with the transition.  Over the last few years the Council had been impacted by a number of trends, namely:-

·                     Effects of a high area of employment – meaning it was harder to attract new talent to the area.  There was a low unemployment level in the area which meant there was a smaller available pool of future employees.

·                     Skills shortages for a number of jobs including planners, IT technical posts and HGV drivers.

·                     Competitiveness of our salaries, as a planned and possible re-grading of salaries had been halted following the change programme due to the announcement of new unitary Council from 1 April 2020.

The Council had put in place numerous interventions deploying all of the levers available and ranging from golden hellos, growing our own staff, attending recruitment fairs, adding market premia and the use of recruitment consultants. 

Further monitoring and controls had been put in place including monthly monitoring, escalation, and ensuring that contracts were competitive and have moved with the current situation.  This had a good /fair success rate in the period up until the unitary announcement.  Members were informed that the use of agency and temporary staff was reducing and AVDC was filling most vacant posts, thereby avoiding the use of temporary staff.  Historic data on the use of agency and consultancy staff was detailed at Annex 1 to the Committee report.

The Committee was informed that the process for appointing agency/temporary staff required sign off by a member of the leadership team prior to any appointment and, in most cases, this had been preceded by at least one cycle of normal recruitment.  Due to the unitary vacancy protocol this meant vacancies were initially advertised for 2 weeks across the 5 Bucks Councils, followed by a normal external period if no internal applications had been received.  In some pressured roles this was concurrently to avoid any delay.

The Council had contracts in place for our generic agency need,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Lorraine Marshall (01296) 585296

The Committee received a report that provided an insight into the current performance of the Council Tax department including on incoming revenue and customer interactions.

In 2018, AVDC had been tasked with the collection of £143,466,236 in Council Tax, the significant majority of which had then been passes on to the Buckinghamshire County Council, the Police and Fire services and Parish/Town Councils.

Any council tax that was not collected "in year" would normally be collected within the first few months of the following financial year, with under 1% of council tax due having to be written off or collected in the following years.  In recent years, national council tax collection rates had fallen although AVDC was an exception to this trend. This year AVDC’s collection rate had been 98.76%, a healthy increase on the 2017/18 final collection figure of 98.45%.

Despite the challenging financial environment, AVDC had also collected over £2 million in previous year debt in 2018/19. This was a substantial increase on the last two years collection for old debt, in 2016/17 the figure collected had been £525,016 and in 2017/18 the amount collected had been £300,012.  The main factors having an impact on collection performance locally and nationally were legislative changes and the impact of austerity and changes to DWP benefit.

·                     A change in Government regulations from 1 April 2013 had allowed people liable to pay council tax the right to pay by 12 instalments instead of the previous 10.  Due to this, any slight delay or default in payment gave the Council little or no time to take recovery action before the end of the financial year meaning that the "in year" recovery rate was reduced.

·                     Austerity meant that some residents had found it difficult to manage their finances even where their annual income was too high for them to qualify for support.  If people experienced short term cash-flow problems then paying Council Tax instalment was often low on their list of priorities.

·                     The introduction of Universal Credit to Aylesbury Vale in September 2018, had affected residents and often resulted in funds being unavailable to make their monthly council tax payments.  The Council had worked hard as a team to ensure that customers were made aware of the changes and had also provided staff and residents with avenues of support and guidance on how the changes might affect their ability to pay.

AVDC ran its own Council Tax Reduction Scheme granting £8,212,099 in 2018/19 to people who were struggling to pay their council tax and are on a low income.  In addition, there was also a £200,000 discretionary fund.  Both schemes had traditionally been used to support people who cannot pay, rather than those people who just choose to priorities other expenditure over paying their council tax.  During 2018/19, the Council had used some of the discretionary fund to assist with a small group of residents who had found themselves in large debt and were facing the situation of not being able to maintain their rental  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Nuala Donnelly (01296) 585164

The Committee received a report, in line with the Treasury Management Strategy that required an annual report to Council after year end, on the performance of the Treasury Management section for the 2018/19 financial year.

The objectives for the Treasury Management team for 2018/19 had been agreed by the Council in February 2018 in the Treasury Management Strategy.  The main activities continued to be:-

·                    Foremost, to maintain, the security of the Council’s deposits by only depositing with trusted financial institutions and limiting the size and length of deposit with each organisation.

·                    To directly manage a range of deposits in order to provide sufficient flexibility to meet day to day operational needs.

·                    To only undertake new long term borrowing where the business case justifies it.

Actual performance was in line with the plan, namely:-

·                    The Council placed deposits in a decreasing market by spreading its deposits thinly across many trusted institutions in accordance with its policy.

·                    The authority did not undertake any new long term borrowing.

·                    The in-house team achieved interest rates above the 7 day LIBOR rate.

The report included information:-

·                    on the average monthly balances deposited by the in house team generated by the in-house team.

·                    on the average weighed rate of return received over the financial year compared to the LIBOR rates.  Over the financial year, the rate of return had increased, and credit risk reduced.  For March 2019, the weighted average rate of return for the Council was 0.87% (on investment of £25.7). This compares to Benchmarking data where, across 231 authorities, the weighted average rate of return was also 0.86%, on investment average of £83.3m.

·                    on the Council performance against capital and treasury indicators, as indicated by the Council Balance sheet, as at 31 March 2019.

·                    In-House Treasury team performance: with interest rates still at low levels, the actual amount of deposit income generated was £375,867.  This was £15,867 higher than planned and £100,781 higher than in 2017-18. This was due to the high level of money available for deposit from unspent reserves and balances held to meet capital programme obligations.

·                    Money Market Funds.

·                    New Borrowings: no new borrowing had been taken out during the year, and loans of £5m had been repaid in May 2018.

·                    Fund Manager Performance: the Council did not use Fund Managers to aid its investment decisions.

·                    Treasury Management Strategy 2019/20: had been approved by full Council in February 2019.

·                    that Cabinet had decided in November 2018 to utilise the Interest Equalisation reserve to support cost pressures arising from the unitary decision.  Whilst there was some risk in terms of financial volatility in delivery of planned investment returns, in recent times there had been better than expected investment income and the expected outlook did not signify a significant risk in the short term.  The reserve had been held to smooth out fluctuations in interest rates.

Members sought additional information and were informed:-

(i)            that all of the Council’s loans were with the Public Works Loans Board and would not be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Nuala Donnelly (01296) 585164

The Committee received the Quarterly Financial Digest for the period to 1 April to 30 June 2019, which represented the position after the first 3 months of the 2019-20 financial year.  The digest was attached as Appendix 1 to the Committee report, and Members referred to it during discussions.

As at the end of June 2019, the Council was reporting a net overspend of £26,813.  While a number of risks and issues had been identified and their impact was being monitored and managed, it was anticipated that any additional cost pressures would be offset by budget underspends and additional income across the Council and a forecast balanced budget would be delivered for the 2019-20 financial year.  This had also been assumed in the Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) agreed by Council in February 2019.

Members were assured that timely reporting had allowed for mitigating actions to be identified by budget holders and managers across the Council to address the emerging financial position.  2019-20 represents an exceptional year for the Council, with the move to the single unitary council in April 2020.  Whilst every effort was being made to deliver a balanced budget and remain focused on continuity of service delivery, the decision had a profound impact on strategy and future planning.

The forecast level of balances for the financial year was reported as £2.353m, higher than planned.  The increase to the working balances was a result of the 2018-19 financial outturn being better than forecast.  Earmarked reserves were held for legitimate reasons and the use of earmarked reserves was an essential part of sound financial planning.

The year to date forecast position currently assumed the use of reserves to support some one off or exceptional spend and to offset agency costs for some areas where there are unusual pressures.  The use of further reserves would be assessed during the year.

Details of the significant cost pressures and efficiencies for the year to date included:-

·                    Pay overspends of £0.4m (after the use of reserves and offset of income due) which included the use of agency to support staffing.

·                    Operational pressures for the housing benefit, waste team at the depot and legal team had necessitated additional temporary staffing costs. These were being actively managed and were forecast to be largely addressed in the coming months.

·                    For the three months to the end of June, a number of vacancies across the Council remain unfilled and not covered by agency, resulting in underspends. This was mainly related to the Project Management Office, the Communications and the Electoral and Democratic teams.  This was mostly as a result of secondments made to the unitary team leaving vacancies at AVDC.

·                    The Council was reporting a year to date overspend of £120,000 on waste disposal costs. The cost of disposal was based mainly on the commodity value of each material (plastic, card, paper etc.) and therefore the cost paid was largely outside of the Council control.  At current spend levels, the annual budget allocation would be exceeded by  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

To consider agenda items for future meetings.  Meetings are scheduled as follows:-

·                    11 November 2019 – Quarterly Finance Digest Q2 2019-20, Treasury Management 2019-20 (Mid Year Review)

·                    17 February 2020 – Not items as yet

RESOLVED –

That the current work programme, as submitted to the meeting, be noted.