Meeting documents

To agree the draft recommendations of the Overview and Scrutiny Task and Finish Group – Report on Medium Term Financial Strategy

The Committee received the draft report of the Financial Strategy Task and Finish Group and suggested the following amendments :-

Slide 5

The Inquiry Group was set up to review the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) in order to provide the Cabinet with the Group’s views, following discussion with officers on how to bridge the funding gap currently identified by the Strategy. They considered the following elements and the basis of the assumptions underpinning them:-

The Group considered if any material expenditure pressures have been omitted and if other savings options could be explored.

Slide 7

1.     Cabinet should review opportunities to bring in revenue from advertising  across all Council assets

Slide 8

1.     Cabinet need to closely monitor the cost of homelessness as this is the most significant key cost pressure going forward.  Measures are already in place to address historic issue.

2.     Cabinet need to ensure that appropriate resources are put into preventing homelessness, as this avoids SBDC having to house families that are homeless in nightly paid accommodation. There needs to be clarity and responsibility for purchasing properties for this purpose outside existing arrangements with Housing Associations.

3.     Cabinet need to address the volume of affordable housing stock by looking at opportunities through the Local Plan, and the housing numbers in the Plan. It will be important to ensure that they deliver appropriate numbers of affordable homes.

Slide 9

1.     All non-statutory fees and charges should be reviewed annually, to ensure that they fully cover the Council’s costs, and are in line with the average charge or higher from neighbouring authorities.

2.     Cabinet should review the green waste fee, to see if there is scope to increase this.

3.     Cabinet should consider having a single long term joint waste contract with all three District councils to obtain economies of scale – CDC currently have lower costs than SBDC because of the nature of their contract, which SBDC could benefit from in the future.

4.     Actively explore scope to increase cemetery charges and burial capacity, including facilities for the non Christian communities and marketing these outside of the area and the use of Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens

Slide 10

4.     Cabinet should review underutilised car parks e.g Burnham as these assets could be more effectively used for the Council’s objectives.

5.     Cabinet should review the use of recycling facilities in car parks as this space could generate extra income. In addition removal of these facilities would reduce the amount of flytipping.

Slide 12

1.     That further planning income should be identified through the Proceeds of Crime and administration of Section 106 agreements and CIL if introduced.

2.     Once the Local Plan has been finally submitted, the Head of Planning should critically review the size of the planning policy team to ensure it is appropriately resourced to meet the (hopefully reduced) requirements going forward.

Slide 13

1.     That Cabinet responds in writing to each of the recommendations made by the Task and Finish Group by the beginning of September to allow the response to be considered at the October meeting of the Committee.

2.     One of the recommendations relates to a challenge/scrutiny session with Portfolio holders. This could be achieved by the Portfolio Holders discussing with O&S members their draft budgets that will be presented to the PAGs. Part of this process could include the extent to which they have taken on board the recommendations of this Task and Finish Group.

3.     That the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee establish a Work Programme which could includea review of all Joint Service arrangements to clarify whether the project outcomes have been achieved and to monitor new joint working programmes e.g. Customer Experience Strategy and ICT Strategy.

Members asked that a slide be added on medium term financial projections.

RESOLVED that the report be submitted to Cabinet for consideration with the changes outlined above.