Meeting documents

To consider Item 8

The Lead Member for Finance, IT and Procurement advised Members that this report presented the proposed revenue and capital Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) for the Financial Years 2019/20 to 2021/22.

The Director of Finance and Assets advised Members that the most significant change from last year related to employer pension contributions. This was primarily as a result to changes in the discount rate which was used to value unfunded public sector pension schemes, of which the Firefighters Scheme was one. The Treasury were meeting the majority of the costs for 2019/20, but there would be a £1.6m pressure from 2020/21 onwards. The Authority had received no assurance from Government regarding funding for future years.

As well as the uncertainty regarding pensions noted above, there was also significant uncertainly regarding next year’s Comprehensive Spending Review, Fair Funding Review, USAR funding and funding for Firelink/ESMCP. In order to effectively plan for the future, during 2019/20 Officers would be taking a zero-based budgeting approach to develop budgets for a number of potential scenarios. These would be developed alongside the new Public Safety Plan.

The Director of Finance and Assets drew Members attention to the updated appendices. The main changes were in terms of business rates. The Authority was £165k short and this was primarily due to business rate volatility. There was a small extra increase in Council Tax surplus of £8k from what was originally projected.

The Director of Finance and Assets advised Members that there was a new section in the report item 9 which looked at the process and implications and potential cost benefit of holding a referendum in a future year. As well as looking at all the options of what the Authority spends, all the available options for raising funds were also looked at and one option available was to hold a referendum. The chart at 9.6 aimed to show what the costs of holding a referendum could be, in total approximately £600k, part of which was holding the referendum itself, the other more substantial cost was rebilling the correct amount if the Authority was unsuccessful.

The Director of Legal and Governance advised that Members had been given a more detailed narrative about the actual process of holding the referendum, to show how heavily prescribed it was and also the constraints to which the Authority would have to work.

The Chairman advised Members that he, and the Chief Fire Officer, would continue to lobby Government to raise the precept limit for Fire and Rescue Authorities.

Members discussed the implications of the Authority holding a referendum and felt, at present, it was not the right time. This would be discussed again with all Members at the full Fire Authority meeting.

RESOLVED –

That the Authority be recommended to:

1(a). Note and have due regard to the report and Statement of the Chief Finance Officer (see section 8 of Annex A).

1(b). Approve a Council Tax precept of £64.57 for a band D equivalent property (a 2.98% increase from 2018/19 – equal to 3.6p per week) and the revenue budget as set out in Appendix 1(b)

1(c). Approve the capital programme as set out in Appendix 2.

2.    Discuss the implications of holding a referendum to increase   Council Tax above the 3% threshold in a future year.