The Committee is asked to consider the Financial Management Report (April to September 2017).

The Deputy Cabinet Member for Finance and Performance and the Chief Financial Officer will be attending the meeting.

The Chairman welcomed Members and officers to the meeting.  The report set out the revenue and capital projected outturn activity for 2017/18 as at the end of September 2017, which had been compiled from monitoring returns from budget managers. 

The Chairman invited the Scrutiny Committee to ask questions, and went through the report page-by-page. The following summarises the responses given to questions.

Page 2:

Property Management: the Chief Financial Officer explained that the £60k variance for rental income was a forecasted year-end position.

Refuse and Street Cleansing: The Head of Commissioning and Customer Contact explained the variances for special collections and refuse sales, which was due to a combination of ad-hoc clearance of bin stores, work for housing associations in cleaning, and refuse sales either to replace existing bins that had become broken or purchased by developers for new housing.

Beach Huts: The Head of Commissioning and Customer Contact confirmed that the variance was due to the beach huts at Leysdown.

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Refuse Collection: The Head of Commissioning and Customer Contact explained that the purchase of wheeled bins comprised of replacing existing refuse bins and the cost of providing new brown bins (for which the Council received income).  The Cabinet Member for Environment and Rural Affairs further clarified that the bulk of the variance was due to the growth in purchase of brown bins (from garden waste subscriptions).

Leisure, Sports, Open Spaces, Parks, Countryside and Allotments: The Head of Commissioning and Customer Contact explained that Central House was a building attached to the Swallows Leisure Centre which shared facilities with the Leisure Centre, such as heating, and so a recharge was made to the range of tenants.

Planning, Audit Shared Service, Land Charges, IT Shared Service, Environmental Health Service: The Chief Financial Officer advised that there were small variations around the cost of services bought in from Mid Kent Services, and agreed to provide further detail.

Leisure Services: In response to a comment regarding whether the variance would increase further next year, the Chairman considered that this was possible.

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Housing Options: the Cabinet Member for Housing and Wellbeing agreed to provide further information about the costs of providing temporary accommodation at the Premier Inn, and the average length of stay.

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Commissioning and Customer Contact, Client and Amenity Services, Customer Services Centre and Technical Services: the Head of Commissioning and Customer Contact explained that the majority of net staff costs savings were due to secondments/short term vacancies and that the savings in the Gateway Contract were due to an increased number of hirings which reduced the amount payable to Kent County Council (KCC).

Development Control: in response to a question regarding the need for specialists to deal with planning appeals, the Head of Planning Services advised that this was difficult to predict but it was likely to reduce now that the Local Plan had been adopted.

Cemeteries and Closed Churchyards: the Cabinet Member for Environment and Rural Affairs explained that additional expenditure on pest control was for fencing the new cemetery.

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Administrative Buildings: the Deputy Cabinet Member for Finance and Performance explained that the additional costs for water at Swale House was as a result of being re-rated.

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Reserve Funds: the Chief Financial Officer explained that details of reserve funds were attached to the budget report being considered by the Cabinet on 7 February 2018.

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Capital Programme Expenditure: the Cabinet Member for Housing and Wellbeing thanked the Member for his persistence regarding requests to find funding to build housing to help alleviate the issue of homelessness, however, he spoke of the difficulties in resolving this issue.  The Chief Financial Officer added that they were constantly looking at ways to get housing schemes for Swale in a way that the Council could afford. 

Table 5: Improvement and Regeneration Funds: the Chief Financial Officer confirmed that there would be an automatic rollover of funds.

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Payment of Creditors: congratulations were given regarding the achievement of paying 99% of creditors in 30 days, which exceeded the 97% target.

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Capital Programme 2017/18: congratulations were given to keeping to the budget for works at the Bell Road Cemeteries.  In respect of the Skate Park, the Head of Economies and Community advised that there had been some difficulties with the transfer of land and the access to the site, but once outstanding planning matters had been resolved, the contractor was ready to start work.

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Air Pollution Monitoring Station: A Member asked for a breakdown of this, referring to the debate on a Motion at the Council meeting the previous evening.  The Cabinet Member for Environment and Rural Affairs agreed to provide a detailed answer.

New Play Area – Thistle Hill – the Chairman congratulated officers on the new play area.

Resolved:

(1) That the report be noted.