Meeting documents

Venue: Large & Small Committee Room, King George V House, King George V Road, Amersham

Contact: Mat Bloxham  01494 732143; Email: mbloxham@chiltern.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

16.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 69 KB

To sign the Minutes of the meeting held on 12 September 2017.

Minutes:

The Minutes of the meeting held on 12 September 2017 were agreed and signed by the Chairman.

 

17.

Declarations of Interest

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest.

 

18.

Staff Turnover pdf icon PDF 174 KB

Minutes:

It was noted at the previous meeting that the level of staff turnover was higher than the target and a further report had been requested.  Appendix 1 showed the Performance Indicator figures previously reported and Appendix 2 gave a breakdown by service area for Chiltern and South Bucks for the period up to and including October 2017.

 

The key points were as follows:

 

1.     Chiltern District figures were skewed due to the TUPE of 10 staff (mainly cleaners) to Derwent FM in April 2017.

2.     Staff movement between Councils had been recorded.  These inter-authority movements were no longer included in these statistics.

3.     Planning had a higher turnover than other areas but it was one of the larger service areas and was currently concluding its shared service implementation.

4.     No underlying trends had been identified.

 

With regard to the Planning Service, it was noted that the market for Planners was very competitive, with private companies offering higher salaries.  The HR team was investigating more training options, including apprenticeship schemes, one year placements, developing links with Oxford Brookes University and succession planning.

 

Members wanted to be satisfied that monitoring of staff turnover in this detail would continue to identify any issues or trends.  They were advised that these matters would be on the agenda of every meeting of the Joint Staffing Committee, whose next meeting is on 18th January 2018.

 

Note 1: Councillor A Garth and Councillor M Stannard entered the meeting at 6.37 pm.  Councillor H Wallace entered the meeting at 6.40 pm and Councillor M Harrold entered the meeting at 6.45 pm.

 

19.

28 Day Notices pdf icon PDF 35 KB

Minutes:

There was a request for the Resources Overview Committee to receive the Treasury Management report at a future meeting.

 

RESOLVED:

 

That the 28 day Notice for Cabinet and Chiltern and South Bucks Joint

Committee be noted.

20.

Budget Report 2018/19 pdf icon PDF 62 KB

Minutes:

The draft Revenue Budget 2018/19 was presented to the Committee for consideration.  The context of the budget was the continuing reduction in central government funding. All services were now provided by joint teams with South Bucks District Council. This was reflected  in the Chiltern budgets by recharges to or from  South Bucks in respect of the costs of the various teams.  On 24 July 2017 it was agreed by the Joint Committee that from 2018/19 the standard cost split should be amended to CDC 58%/SBDC 42% and this would be used for all services except Revenues & Benefits and Waste (which had separate arrangements).  These percentages were in line with the population split which was the basis of the cost share set out in the Inter Authority Agreement, and would be easier to administrate and would result in a negligible financial change overall.

 

The overall position for the draft Revenue Budget 2018/19 was for an increase in the Net Cost of Services of 2.3%.  Inflation estimates were shown in section 4 with salaries at 1% (the Joint Staffing Committee would consider locally determined pay increase in January 2018) and contracts inflation of 3.3%.  Any surplus would be added to the reserves (section 7) and it was noted that the Support Services PAG would be discussing the level of and use of reserves.  The final decisions would be made by Cabinet in February 2018 after the final funding settlement from Government was announced (expected by the end of 2017).

 

The Council was undertaking a number of large investment projects funded by borrowing and the Committee discussed the proposed borrowing for the Car Park and it was asked whether the interest element should be capitalised.  It was advised that this was not something done at CDC previously.  It was discussed that this was an accounting procedure that would be done in the private sector and something for Cabinet to consider.

 

With regard to employee expenditure (listed on page 32), there was a request to consider whether it would be possible for the FTE details to be inserted alongside the budget figures in future, so that a direct comparison could be made.  It was agreed that this may be possible with an additional table.  It was acknowledged that the changes to cost shares that have taken place in the budgets this year make direct comparisons difficult but that this would become easier once the changes are complete.

 

Appendix 3

A request was made for the major changes to be itemised for each service, with explanatory notes for the salient points.

 

Appendix 4

It was asked whether the Customer Services team dealt with Waste queries and if so why there was no recharge relating to Waste.  It was advised that WDC did pay a contribution to a range of overheads and this recharge was shown within the waste cost centre.

 

With regard to the training agreement for Revenues with Dacorum, it was advised that the formal arrangement had come to an end at Dacorum’s  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20.