Agenda item

Presentation attached.

Andrew Pate – Resources Director introduced the item and gave an overview presentation on service areas within his Directorate. (a full copy of this presentation is available from Democratic Services or on the Council Website). The following points were covered:

• Customer Services
• Finance
• Improvement and Performance
• Legal and Democratic Services (reports to Chief Executive)
• Policy and Partnerships
• Property Services
• Risk and Assurance
• Transformation and Change Programme

The Director gave a brief summary, statistics and key facts for each service.

The Panel members raised the following points and asked the following questions:

Following a question from Councillor Roberts, Ian Savigar – Divisional Director Revenues and Benefits and Council Connect explained that Council Connect staff are now getting more support from other departments when following up calls and that this had brought about big improvements in call resolution especially for highways and missed bins.

Councillor Pritchard asked what type of flood defence equipment had been purchased in the Chew Valley area. The Director explained that people had been helped with flood defence training and also supplied with barriers (door barriers, self closing air bricks etc).

Councillor Roberts asked about the review of the IT programme and how he could be assured, in terms of value for money, what benefit the authority would get from it. Angela Parratt – Head of Transformation – explained that the change programme was not technology led. She further explained that by October, there would be a road map highlighting how many systems were being used in the organisation. This road map would help to reduce cost by reducing the number of systems and it would also help to identify where there are gaps. The officer further explained that the overall amount of money spent had been reduced by taking a licensing holiday.

In response to a question from Councillor Barrett on grant levels, Andrew Pate – Director of Resources - explained that the way the Council gets grants from the Government is under review and it was unclear if this would be good for this authority in the short term. In particular the Government Resource Review was looking at the return to Local Government income from business rates growth starting in 2013/14. In the medium term the answer will depend on how much housing growth and business rates growth takes place compared with other Local Authorities. He explained that he would find out more during August when the Government starts to issue the detail and report back to the Panel in the later in the year.

Councillor Laming asked how saving on the BRT would reflect on the Council’s finances. Tim Richens – Divisional Director Finance – explained that this was not expected to directly materially affect the Council’s revenue budgets. Andrew Pate – Director of Resources – went on to explain that there may be a one off hit to reserves as reported as a risk to full Council, ie the revenue reversion risk for project costs so far charged to capital for aspects of the project that stop. This risk which is between £3.5million and £7million would initially be a call on revenue reserves. He also referred to the potential additional cost of borrowing for elements of the scheme previously funded through park and ride additional income also referred to in the report in the region of £200,000.

The Chairman thanked officers for the presentation.