Issue - meetings

Cllr L D Carter

Key Decision identified as Service & Financial Planning Report 2020/21 – 2022/23 in the Notice of Key Decisions published on 22 January 2020.

Councillor L D Carter, Cabinet Member: Finance, Commercial Services & Economic Development, presented the report of the Director: Finance & Human Resources (Chief Financial Officer).

Reserved for Council

Councillor L D Carter, Cabinet Member: Council Finance, Partnerships & Commercial Services, presented a series of reports from the Chief Executive, the Chief Financial Officer, the Executive Director for Housing, Communities and Customer Services and the Director: Policy, Customer & Commercial Services. The reports, detailed the Revenue Budget, medium term Capital Strategy and Programme, the Investment and Treasury Management Strategies and Prudential Indicators. In July 2019, following the local elections held in May, the Council’s Cabinet agreed a four year programme to “Protect, Care and Invest to Create a Better Borough”.  The Council’s ambition for the borough was for Telford and Wrekin, to be known as: “The place of enterprise, innovation and partnership”.  The Council’s Service and Financial Planning Strategy sought to align available resources with this overarching programme and ambition.

On 28 February 2019 the Council approved a one year service and financial planning strategy for the current financial year.  A one year strategy was agreed because the Government were proposing to make major changes to the local government finance system which were due to be implemented from April 2020 and in addition, no Government spending figures were available beyond the end of the current year. 

In view of this significant uncertainty over the future of local government finance and what resources may be available to the Council beyond the following year, when the Cabinet considered their draft budget proposals for 2020/21 at the meeting held on 2 January 2020, they again approved a one year strategy for consultation. However, because capital projects needed to be planned over a longer time horizon new capital investment proposals were included for 2020/21 and the following three years.  Following the Cabinet meeting, a one month engagement period on the Council’s proposals commenced on 3 January 2020 and ended on 31 January 2020.  The details of the engagement process were summarised in the report.

The severe financial constraints that the Council had to operate within during a decade of austerity had necessitated very active budget management and financial control by Cabinet Members and officers across the Council.  The Council had demonstrated a consistently strong track record of sound financial management delivering a financial outturn within budget and unqualified audit opinions for well over a decade despite having to deliver £123,000,000 annual budget savings by the end of 2019/20 - without the need to implement any emergency spending control measures.  The Council’s external auditors had consistently reported that the Council’s arrangements for securing value for money were satisfactory.

The report identified key strategies including:-

·         Increasing Council Tax for 2020/21 by 1.99% and that the Government’s additional 2% “Adult Social Care precept” be applied.  This gave a total increase of 3.99%, raising £2.69m in total.  3. Investment in the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 44