Budget Scrutiny Inquiry Task and Finish Group - Monday 12 January 2026, 10:00am - Buckinghamshire Council Webcasting

Budget Scrutiny Inquiry Task and Finish Group
Monday, 12th January 2026 at 10:00am 

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  1. Cllr John Chilver
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  1. Katie Dover - Senior Scrutiny Officer
  2. Cllr John Chilver
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  1. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  2. Cllr John Chilver
  3. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  4. Cllr John Chilver
  5. Cllr Martin Tett
  6. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  7. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  8. Cllr John Chilver
  9. Cllr Chris Poll
  10. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  11. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  12. Cllr John Chilver
  13. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  14. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  15. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  16. Cllr John Chilver
  17. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  18. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  19. Cllr John Chilver
  20. Cllr Andy Huxley
  21. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  22. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  23. Cllr John Chilver
  24. Cllr Anna Crabtree
  25. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  26. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  27. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  28. Cllr John Chilver
  29. Cllr Christine Adali
  30. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  31. Cllr Christine Adali
  32. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  33. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  34. Cllr Christine Adali
  35. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  36. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  37. Cllr Christine Adali
  38. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  39. Cllr Christine Adali
  40. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  41. Cllr John Chilver
  42. Cllr Martin Tett
  43. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  44. Cllr Martin Tett
  45. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  46. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  47. Cllr Martin Tett
  48. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  49. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  50. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  51. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  52. Cllr John Chilver
  53. Cllr Chris Poll
  54. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  55. Cllr Chris Poll
  56. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  57. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  58. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  59. Cllr John Chilver
  60. Cllr Nidhi Mehta
  61. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  62. Cllr Nidhi Mehta
  63. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  64. Cllr Nidhi Mehta
  65. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  66. Lisa Marie Williams - Service Director for Legal & Democratic Services
  67. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  68. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  69. Cllr John Chilver
  70. Cllr Anna Crabtree
  71. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  72. Lisa Marie Williams - Service Director for Legal & Democratic Services
  73. Cllr John Chilver
  74. Cllr Christine Adali
  75. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  76. Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability
  77. Cllr Christine Adali
  78. Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability
  79. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  80. Cllr John Chilver
  81. Cllr Dev Dhillon
  82. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  83. Cllr John Chilver
  84. Cllr Martin Tett
  85. Cllr Steven Broadbent
  86. Cllr Martin Tett
  87. Cllr John Chilver
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  1. Cllr John Chilver
  2. Cllr Andy Huxley
  3. Cllr John Chilver
  4. Cllr Chris Poll
  5. Cllr John Chilver
  6. Cllr Steve Bowles
  7. Cllr John Chilver
  8. Cllr Dev Dhillon
  9. Cllr Steve Bowles
  10. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  11. Cllr Dev Dhillon
  12. Cllr Steve Bowles
  13. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  14. Cllr Steve Bowles
  15. Cllr John Chilver
  16. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  17. Cllr Steve Bowles
  18. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  19. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  20. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  21. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  22. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  23. Cllr John Chilver
  24. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  25. Cllr Steve Bowles
  26. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  27. Cllr Steve Bowles
  28. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  29. Cllr Steve Bowles
  30. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  31. Cllr John Chilver
  32. Cllr Andy Huxley
  33. Cllr Steve Bowles
  34. Cllr Andy Huxley
  35. Cllr Steve Bowles
  36. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  37. Cllr John Chilver
  38. Cllr Christine Adali
  39. Cllr Steve Bowles
  40. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  41. Cllr Christine Adali
  42. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  43. Cllr Christine Adali
  44. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  45. Cllr Christine Adali
  46. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  47. Cllr Christine Adali
  48. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  49. Cllr Christine Adali
  50. Cllr Steve Bowles
  51. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  52. Cllr Steve Bowles
  53. Cllr John Chilver
  54. Cllr Anna Crabtree
  55. Cllr Steve Bowles
  56. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  57. Cllr Steve Bowles
  58. Cllr John Chilver
  59. Cllr Martin Tett
  60. Cllr Steve Bowles
  61. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  62. Cllr Martin Tett
  63. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  64. Cllr Martin Tett
  65. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  66. Cllr Martin Tett
  67. Craig McArdle - Corporate Director for Adult Social Care
  68. Cllr Martin Tett
  69. Craig McArdle - Corporate Director for Adult Social Care
  70. Cllr John Chilver
  71. Cllr Nidhi Mehta
  72. Cllr Steve Bowles
  73. Cllr John Chilver
  74. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  75. Cllr John Chilver
  76. Cllr Chris Poll
  77. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  78. Cllr Chris Poll
  79. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  80. Cllr Chris Poll
  81. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  82. Cllr Chris Poll
  83. Cllr Steve Bowles
  84. Cllr John Chilver
  85. Cllr Mohammed Ayub
  86. Cllr Steve Bowles
  87. Cllr Mohammed Ayub
  88. Cllr Steve Bowles
  89. Cllr John Chilver
  90. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  91. Cllr Steve Bowles
  92. Cllr John Chilver
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  1. Cllr John Chilver
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  1. Cllr Thomas Broom
  2. Cllr John Chilver
  3. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  4. Cllr Thomas Broom
  5. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  6. Cllr John Chilver
  7. Cllr Martin Tett
  8. Cllr Thomas Broom
  9. Cllr John Chilver
  10. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  11. Cllr John Chilver
  12. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  13. Cllr Thomas Broom
  14. Cllr John Chilver
  15. Cllr Chris Poll
  16. Cllr Thomas Broom
  17. Cllr Chris Poll
  18. Cllr Thomas Broom
  19. Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability
  20. Cllr John Chilver
  21. Cllr Andy Huxley
  22. Cllr Thomas Broom
  23. Cllr John Chilver
  24. Cllr Andy Huxley
  25. Cllr Thomas Broom
  26. Cllr John Chilver
  27. Cllr Anna Crabtree
  28. Cllr Thomas Broom
  29. Cllr John Chilver
  30. Cllr Christine Adali
  31. Cllr Thomas Broom
  32. Cllr John Chilver
  33. Cllr Dev Dhillon
  34. Cllr Peter Martin
  35. Cllr Thomas Broom
  36. Cllr Peter Martin
  37. Cllr Dev Dhillon
  38. Cllr Peter Martin
  39. Cllr John Chilver
  40. Cllr Penny Drayton
  41. Cllr Thomas Broom
  42. Cllr Penny Drayton
  43. Cllr Thomas Broom
  44. Cllr Penny Drayton
  45. Cllr Thomas Broom
  46. Cllr John Chilver
  47. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  48. Cllr Thomas Broom
  49. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  50. Cllr Thomas Broom
  51. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  52. Cllr Thomas Broom
  53. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  54. Cllr Thomas Broom
  55. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  56. Cllr John Chilver
  57. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  58. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  59. Cllr Thomas Broom
  60. Cllr John Chilver
  61. Cllr Anja Schaefer
  62. Cllr Thomas Broom
  63. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  64. Cllr Thomas Broom
  65. Cllr Anja Schaefer
  66. Cllr Thomas Broom
  67. Cllr John Chilver
  68. Cllr Robin Stuchbury
  69. Cllr Thomas Broom
  70. Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability
  71. Cllr Robin Stuchbury
  72. Cllr Thomas Broom
  73. Cllr Robin Stuchbury
  74. Cllr John Chilver
  75. Cllr Christine Adali
  76. Cllr Thomas Broom
  77. Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability
  78. Cllr John Chilver
  79. Cllr Martin Tett
  80. Cllr Thomas Broom
  81. Cllr Martin Tett
  82. Cllr Thomas Broom
  83. Cllr Martin Tett
  84. Cllr Thomas Broom
  85. Cllr John Chilver
  86. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  87. Cllr Thomas Broom
  88. Cllr John Chilver
  89. Cllr Andy Huxley
  90. Cllr Thomas Broom
  91. Cllr John Chilver
  92. Cllr Anna Crabtree
  93. Cllr Thomas Broom
  94. Cllr John Chilver
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  1. Cllr John Chilver
  2. Cllr Robert Carington
  3. Cllr John Chilver
  4. Cllr Nidhi Mehta
  5. Cllr Robert Carington
  6. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  7. Cllr Nidhi Mehta
  8. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  9. Cllr Nidhi Mehta
  10. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  11. Cllr John Chilver
  12. Cllr Christine Adali
  13. Cllr Robert Carington
  14. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  15. Cllr Robert Carington
  16. Cllr John Chilver
  17. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  18. Cllr Robert Carington
  19. Cllr Stuart Wilson
  20. Cllr Robert Carington
  21. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  22. Cllr John Chilver
  23. Cllr Martin Tett
  24. Cllr Robert Carington
  25. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  26. Cllr Martin Tett
  27. Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities
  28. Cllr Martin Tett
  29. Cllr Robert Carington
  30. Cllr Martin Tett
  31. Cllr Robert Carington
  32. Cllr John Chilver
  33. Cllr Dev Dhillon
  34. Cllr Robert Carington
  35. Cllr John Chilver
  36. Cllr Anna Crabtree
  37. Cllr Robert Carington
  38. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  39. Cllr John Chilver
  40. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  41. Cllr Robert Carington
  42. Cllr John Chilver
  43. Cllr Andy Huxley
  44. Cllr Robert Carington
  45. Cllr Andy Huxley
  46. Cllr Robert Carington
  47. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  48. Cllr John Chilver
  49. Cllr Robert Carington
  50. Cllr John Chilver
  51. Cllr Chris Poll
  52. Cllr Robert Carington
  53. Cllr John Chilver
  54. Cllr Martin Tett
  55. Cllr Robert Carington
  56. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  57. Sarah Fogden - Head of Finance for Resources
  58. Cllr Martin Tett
  59. Sarah Fogden - Head of Finance for Resources
  60. Cllr Martin Tett
  61. Sarah Fogden - Head of Finance for Resources
  62. Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources
  63. Cllr Martin Tett
  64. Cllr John Chilver
  65. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  66. Cllr John Chilver
  67. Cllr Martin Tett
  68. David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer
  69. Cllr Robert Carington
  70. Cllr John Chilver
  71. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  72. Cllr Robert Carington
  73. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  74. Cllr Robert Carington
  75. Cllr John Chilver
  76. Cllr Trevor Snaith
  77. Cllr John Chilver
  78. Cllr Robert Carington
  79. Cllr John Chilver
  80. Cllr Robert Carington
  81. Cllr John Chilver
  82. Webcast Finished

Cllr John Chilver - 0:00:00
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this meeting of the Budget Scrutiny Inquiry Task
and Finish Group. This is the first of three days of meetings. My name is John Chilva,
and I'm the chairman of the group. So I'd like to welcome all members in attendance,
officers, and members of the public watching on the webcast.
I'd like to remind members and officers to use their microphones every time they speak,
and to ask you that you introduce yourselves prior to speaking for the first time.
The sessions will follow a consistent format. Each cabinet member will introduce their budget
proposals, highlighting key areas and risks following by inquiry group questions, questions
from any other members in attendance, and any questions submitted from the public, time
permitted.
Before we go into the agenda proper, as this is the first Council meeting of the New Year,
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Councillor Martin Tett, the former leader of the Council,
on his thoroughly deserved award of the CBE in the New Year's Honours List, to recognise his many years of public service.
So shall we all give Martin a round of applause?
APPLAUSE
apologies for absence and changes of membership.

1 Apologies for absence / Changes in membership

I have no apologies or changes, Councillor. Thank you.
Katie Dover - Senior Scrutiny Officer - 0:01:51
Cllr John Chilver - 0:01:54
Thank you. The next item is declarations of interest.

2 Declarations of interest

Do we have any interests that members wish to declare at this point?
I can't see any.
Background papers.

3 Background Papers

Just to remind those in attendance and watching online that the background papers are available online and have been circulated prior to the meeting.

4 Leader (Councillor Steven Broadbent)

So the next substantial item is a presentation by the leader of the Council, Councillor Stephen Borkvent, followed by questions.
So welcome to the leader and supporting officers.
We have corporate directors, Lisa Marie Williams and Steve Bambrick, and our Head of Finance,
Section 151 Officer David Skinner, supported by the Deputy Head of Finance Fiona Jump.
So welcome to you all.
I would like the leader to introduce the overall context for the proposed budget, the overall
capital position, governance, and funding for the capital programme.
And then the leader will also outline his old, his own portfolio budget, and then we'll
follow with questions.
So over to Councillor Broadbent to present.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 0:03:34
Thank you, Mr Chairman. Good morning and morning to all members of the committee and everybody watching online. As you say Stephen Broadbent,
the elected leader of Buckinghamshire Council.
So you made reference a moment ago Chairman to the background paper pack that is
considerable and there's an awful lot of numbers in there. I think the headline point is, as we are required to do,
the Council must deliver ultimately a balanced budget
and the proposals in here do achieve that. It's a robust and balanced budget.
But it's done so in
quite an interesting
change of
context from a funding point of view. So knowing that the funding arrangements this year that help
make the budget have seen their biggest change in 20 years through government changes in something
they are calling fair funding, we have had within this PAC to put together the proposals on that new
footprint. The fair funding elements is in my view misnamed and as we have this
discussion I will come across and share with you examples of where it is
not fair to Buckinghamshire. But ultimately even though we foresaw what
was coming down the track I think you will be only two away yourself Mr.
and along with Councillor Tett and others,
who saw that the funding squeeze was going to come
from government, and in last year's budget,
we anticipated just over 20 million pounds
worth of potential reduction,
and it's proven to be almost twice as difficult
and twice as bad as that.
I'll come onto that in more detail.
I do need to say to residents,
the other bit of context here is a significant rising demand
for the services that the Council provide.
So the Council provides over 1 ,300 different services,
but the big four of those, those are outlined in the pack,
and this is adult social care, children's social care
in general, temporary accommodation,
and home school transport costs.
We'll see in this budget those four areas alone
that is used by only about 10 % of the population of Buckinghamshire.
Will actually account for seventy six percent of the overall amount of expenditure that the council
Spends during this three -year period
so that means
The other services that people value greatly everything from the roads programmes to libraries to planning enforcement
Is coming from a shrinking amount of relatively available funds?
24 % of the budget and yet when me and the cabinet embarked upon work with the
officers here to make sure that we could present a balanced budget proposal we
wanted to make sure we protect resident priorities and service delivery as much
as possible so you will see in here that bin collections are protected whereas
some other areas are reducing their frequency you will see a continued
investment in our roads and transport portfolio. You will see a continued
investment into our planning enforcement. That demand for growth though,
particularly in those big four areas, is driven by more people requiring the
service, more complexity in the need, obviously the cost inflation of
providing those services, and the top ten demand areas alone will see a hundred
million more in spend over this period.
So I thought I'd break down all of this pack, if I may, just into four significant numbers
that will help me to just give a bit more context.
The first of those is that 44 and a half million pounds.
The 44 and a half million pounds is an important number.
This is the amount of money that Buckinghamshire will lose as a result of the government's
fair funding proposals. This is money where they're saying in their formula we
are expected to increase council tax to the maximum permitted which is 4 .99 %
but with your indulgence I'll just keep saying 5 % for ease. So their
formula bakes in the requirement financially for us to put council tax up
And then what they do is they will equalise a way to use their language.
They will take that money away and send it to other parts of the country because they
believe that funding is more required elsewhere than it is here in Buckinghamshire.
As I said earlier, we had anticipated there might be an outcome like that, so more than
20 million was already in our savings and efficiency proposals.
But that 44 and a half million shows that we've been twice as penalised and they have
moved away from that being fully evidence -based.
At the last minute, when we had a very late budget settlement, government decided to retain
across the country something called the recovery grant worth £600 million that directly penalises
county areas such as ours and put more money into metropolitan areas.
The justification for that was only due to stakeholder feedback.
It is not evidence -based.
They have removed the relative impacts and the costs associated with the rural nature
of a county such as ours.
That meant even more money will be taken away from Buckinghamshire.
I need to reiterate the point.
The council, the formula the government used expects the council to maximise council tax
rates, collection and revenue. If we fail to do that then there is no additional
money from government to fill the particular hole and therefore in the
context of such rising demands and then I fully understand how difficult this is
for residents we have had to propose doing that council tax increase. The
You will see in the pack and residents will rightly ask,
where does the money go?
How efficient is it?
What is the value for money?
Have you made savings?
What about waste?
Well, $296 million is the amount of money by the end of this financial
MTFP period.
MTFP being the budget period, which in this term is three years from now.
Since this council was formed, then the last council term and this,
we have to deliver efficiency savings,
reductions in service costs,
and maximise revenue where we can.
It's 296 million pounds since all the five council budgets
came together, represents a reduction of 67%.
So I ask people when they think it must all be waste,
this is a council who have taken the decision
and delivered the savings to remove two thirds of that, in comparative terms, two thirds
of their expenditure.
We are driving down efficiency in all areas and 187 million of that has already happened,
75 million alone in this year.
But you will see that job is not yet done and in this term we have to do over another
million pounds of saving and that's outlined on page 24 of the pack. The
third big area I wanted to mention is 209 million. 209 million is the size of
the DSG, the devolved services grant, their dedicated support grant, sorry,
I get it right.
£209 million is the unofficial, if you like, overdraft value that the governments expect
councils to incur to meet the costs, particularly of special educational needs in schools.
If I tell you back in 23 -24, the size of this deficit of this pot was six and a half million pounds.
By the end of this MTFP, that will have grown to 209 million pounds.
And whilst government have now twice kicked down the road their supposed promise to bring forward plans on how this will be funded into the future,
This is not a Buckinghamshire only problem.
This exponential growth in this expenditure area
has a real impact on our provision,
has an impact on its effect of an interest free loan
going into government because we incur the costs
of financing this.
And I mention it because it's one of the big risks
that are still in this budget as we sit here today.
There are risks around growing numbers of costs.
If that demand estimate is different and higher,
that will drive it up more.
There are differencing risks on government policy.
So when they last year put national insurance
contributions up, that cost the council directly
about five million pounds.
And they granted us just shy of four million pounds
to cover that.
That cost gets baked in.
Their changes to fuel duty we'll see
further rises in costs at all levels
as we go through this budget period.
This budget tries to reflect risk
in what the budget proposals are,
but undoubtedly I cannot sit here today
saying although the budget is balanced,
I cannot say it's without risk
because of course it is only a forecast forward.
The government settlement will give us money
for each of three years, or for three years in total,
but with an estimated spread.
So if inflation does not come back down
to the government's target, we will have to meet the cost
of that inflation.
These are cash balance settlement numbers
from government.
They are not indexed linked.
So of course if inflation runs away and does not come back
down to the OBR's expectation, that is a cost we will have
to find the government say you've been given your
settlement.
And of course that could be a significant risk to us.
And the final of the four numbers before we'll get to questions, and you referenced the capital
programme, is £627 million.
That's what's in our capital programme.
There's bits of that on page 25, I think, of the pack.
The capital programme includes everything from building some of the major road infrastructure
like Seeler here in Aylesbury through to the building of children's homes so that not only
can we provide a closer to Buckinghamshire provision that delivers better outcomes for
the children in there, it means that use of capital money reduces our reliance and the
number of expensive out of county placements that we have to currently spend money on to
meet our legal obligations for service provision.
And there's examples of that all the way through the budget pack.
It also shows, coming back to resident priorities, an increased spend on transport infrastructure,
120 million into road resurfacing, a total of nearly 220 million in transport.
to do other unseen things as well, like make sure that our ageing infrastructure is looked after,
our bridges, our culverts, and so on.
And the final set of comments I wish to make is, again, a little bit in context.
On top of the changes made in this budget, where we have got ahead of things,
and for example, put an extra three million into education, health, and care plans
in advance of this budget, doing so in the expectation
of what we knew was coming down the line from government
to help meet the demanding rise.
We've heard that the special SEND school has been cancelled,
is proposed to be cancelled by the government.
So instead of a new school that would have been
around 20 million pounds worth of investment
to provide provision for 150 children,
we've now got an additional eight million pound grant only
to try and meet their needs. Similarly, there are elements of unfairness in this
budget. So for example, there was not a single council in the land who take a
hundred percent collection rate on council tax. The average is around ninety
six and a half percent. We beat that. We're about ninety eight and a half
percent in Buckinghamshire. That difference alone with the with
government saying this is how we're going to put this in the formula for
money, they know no one can get to 100%.
That loan costs us over a million pounds.
So there's lots of unseen elements.
Only last week with senior finance officials in the MHCLG,
I flippantly regarded this as the sort of supermarket way of dealing with budgets.
There's that supermarket that says every little helps.
Well in this instance, every little hurts.
Because not only you damaging Buckinghamshire's finances by taking away
the 44 and a half million.
There's all this unseen elements in where the grants are cut,
where the conditions of grants play in,
and then unseen things like there's another million
that is not available here.
The budget links very closely to the corporate plan
and the emerging corporate plan.
You'll see there's still money in here to help boost our places
and our communities provide opportunity for all and protect the vulnerable.
We do have a changing demographic, and particularly an ageing demographic, here in Buckinghamshire.
We have very strong partnerships.
We build on our economic development and our growth to try and make sure that people can
get good skills, good jobs, and we'll continue to do that even in light of the reduction
in grants in some of those areas.
And the last thing to say, whilst the huge, the impact in the next few years may be limited,
though we do make reference in the PAC to the planning risk,
95 and a half thousand new homes coming into Buckinghamshire will put more and more pressure
on council services and our infrastructure, and there is no additional foresight
or money put forward for that.
You wanted me also, though, just to mention my own portfolio.
So my own portfolio has significant amount of the capital spend on strategic infrastructure.
You will now see the first part of the CELO and the Stoke Mandeville relief road is open for example.
And hopefully by this time next year the
continuing part to connect us up to the Wendover Road will be open as well.
We have a
communications
team who have been through a service review, an economic team, development team, been through a service review to make sure
we are right -sized for the challenges to come,
but that is still challenging.
But I'm happy to take questions on those in due course.
That I think is the context I want to give.
We have prioritised the services residents tell us
are priorities to them in that difficult funding context,
and we'll continue to do that.
Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Broadbent.
Cllr John Chilver - 0:20:12
And the leader mentioned CELA just to explain to those watching that that stands for the
South East Aylesbury Link Road, which is part of the network of new link roads around Aylesbury.
I'd now like to ask our Head of Finance, Dave Skinner, if there's anything he'd like to
add.
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 0:20:29
No, I think the PAC's very comprehensive and I think the leader's taken through all the
highlights.
I'm sure the committee will have a set of questions.
Thank you very much indeed.
Cllr John Chilver - 0:20:38
So I open the floor now to any members of the committee who wish wishes to ask a question.
I would ask that we ask questions on the overall budget landscape first and then move on to
the specific portfolio questions.
So we start with Councillor Tett.
Yes, thank you very much, Mr Chairman, and thanks to the leader, I think, for giving
Cllr Martin Tett - 0:21:00
an excellent introduction, particularly for members of the public who are watching this,
to the very challenging economic circumstances
that face the council.
So I don't in any way envy him,
the role he's got this year trying to balance his budget.
But I was just trying to understand
some of the risks involved in this, and they are flagged.
But when I looked at the current year's out -turn,
you know, we've currently got a situation
where we're forecasting and overspending portfolios
of 4 .7 million.
That's mitigated down by 2 .1 million
by what they call underspends.
I suspect pressure on other budgets not to spend.
And that still leaves a substantial element to be absorbed
by what's called corporate underspend.
Most of that corporate underspend comes from things
like interest rates that have been quite high
over the last year on large cash balances.
Looking at it now in the budget context,
there's gonna be falling interest rates
if you believe the OBR and the Bank of England,
and reducing cash balances, particularly
in the light of the immensely significant challenge
in the high -needs block.
To what extent are you confident that that pattern of behaviour,
because we no longer have contingencies,
but actually relying on the corpora underspend
and also pressure on other service areas
to reduce their spending, is sustainable over the next three
year period.
Thank you, Martin, for the question.
Dave will probably comment in a minute.
But you're absolutely right, and you know this only too well.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 0:22:44
In year, we have to each year have to have an absolute laser -like focus on the expenditure
in each portfolio.
And the numbers in the pack reflect that in the first quarter of the year,
the potential over expend this year was going to exceed £5 million.
And we've taken a range of measures really focused on expenditure to bring that back.
One thing we cannot do though, even if we miss, is be over reliant on the reserves, as you say.
we certainly cannot be over reliant on what's called treasury management saying,
oh, it's all right, we'll get, there'll be some interest coming in.
Because of the reasons that you've outlined that there's no certainty about
what that is.
So the balanced budget in here will not have an over reliance on
treasury management and income from that.
Deliberately, it is down to the council to make sure that budgets are met.
But that challenge is really difficult.
Only just before Christmas, three new cases, children cases came in who were high cost,
who hadn't been there in the rest of the year.
And I've got to look at Dave just to clarify, but they were in between them in the realms
of another three quarters of a million to a million pounds expenditure that is unknown
about if we were sitting here eight weeks ago.
And so that's why, whilst we don't have contingencies,
we have reserves where we have to meet,
that will help us meet the short -term need from that.
But this funding settlement,
if it were extended another three years
and another three years,
will ultimately mean a reduction in funding
once you cut everything
and we still meet our legal obligations.
Eventually, they are pushing all councils in the sector
towards a lack of financial sustainability.
So whether people want to say I'm complaining
about money going to other parts of the country
on our perspective, just from our perspective or not,
these plans are not sustainable for any council
across the country because they create a series of cliff edge.
It's all about the timing of when that is.
But we're not trying to over rely on treasury management.
But David might want to say something else.
Yeah, thank you leader. I think I would just add that this council
has a very strong track record of delivering savings on time and
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 0:25:19
to the value of those set out and that's why
we are
Much though we are in a very difficult position financially. We are not in the same place as a number of other councils
So we are still in a very strong and resilient place
The point I would make is that you're quite right to say that we cannot become reliant on Treasury Management income going forwards
and that's why we take a very prudent view.
We do have the opportunity in here to kind of flex that
in terms of we could over deliver savings if required
to balance the overall position, but that does take us
into very difficult situations, but it would only be
on the basis of the acceleration of savings
that have already been approved in terms of going forwards.
Then there are then a set of measures that we can take
in terms of use of earmarked reserves.
So we have what's called mitigating future financial risks reserve, which has prudently been put aside from previous years
and fortuitous under spent some of them delivered by Treasury management
Which we can go into if we need to in terms of going forwards and then as the result of you know
Kind of the last resort then there is the general fund
Reserve in terms of kind of going through that general fund reserve in extreme this will last as 12 days of our gross spend
That is not very much money so therefore the control measures and the very very careful and diligent monitoring both by
Cabinet in terms of kind of going through and reviewing the budget position and by the corporate management team
standards in good stead and the way that we've approached that previously
demonstrates that we've got a really strong track record in terms of going forward.
Thank you very much. Next question I think from Councillor Pole.
Cllr John Chilver - 0:27:03
Thank you Chairman. Yes I'm Councillor Chris Pohl and I represent the Ivinghoe
Cllr Chris Poll - 0:27:10
Ward. Thank you leader. A question through on the overview of the
budget proposals on point 2 .8 which in our pack is on page 5. It
mentions about allocated grant funds not yet fully decided. These are ring -fence
for specific purposes.
So I'd like to understand what impact they may have
to the budget as they're not finalised yet.
And also, referred to on page 29,
about the possible or mooted U -turn on the business rate
reduction of relief for hospitality.
Will that have an impact on us as well?
So that may be a question for the leader or Section 151 officer. Thank you.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 0:28:09
Thanks, Councillor Paul for that. Yeah, two parts. So grants are really interesting area coming through from government.
So we have seen a whole range of grants for many years being paid
to the council, given to the council for various endeavours.
Part of the proposals now they've rolled in lots of old grants into new grants and given it a new badge.
There are ups and downs within that. So for example, we have seen a
complete shortfall and removal of some grants, some to do economic development.
We've seen other elements where grants are maybe ticked up slightly. I think we
got a few ten thousand pounds more for rough sleeping grant but then that's
offset by significant millions reduction in other areas,
or hundreds, thousands of pounds less
for revenue bus support, but then bus capital is up.
So overall, the grant picture is mixed.
But the way this equalisation is happening by government
is when they say, now you maximise your council tax base,
they are reducing grant levels, and taking,
to link it to your second point, taking more of the business rates so the council retains
less of the business rates.
I think it's important for people watching to realise whilst the council collects the
business rates, it's not all retained by the council.
We are allowed to retain a certain proportion and what the government will do for this equalisation
is mean we have to retain even less because they will use that money to be the money they
and elsewhere saying instead you're relying on local taxation.
I'll let Dave mention, well two other things, but I'll let Dave mention on the impact of
the proposed hospitality changes.
I'll let Dave mention, but I'll be sceptical as to whether that will benefit the council,
but I do think it just shows complete lack of understanding when the proposals were put
through that will empower lots of our small businesses, particularly hospitality and pub
businesses. And just to declare an interest, I'm a member of the British Institute of
Inkeeping, I ought to say that, but they need to go further, do more, and of course our
pubs and hospitality pay full VAT, which is a campaign that's been running a long time.
Back to this impact, the grants we are seeing are coming with much stricter levels of conditions
functionality around them. So about 50 million of the grants going on for about 40 %
is heavily conditioned. So there is an increase in our public health grant, but
we are being conditioned on how that has to be spent, which means
Buckinghamshire's priorities
may fortunately meet those that are being set in Westminster
But we have far less discretion over how to use that grant to best reflect the needs of
Buckinghamshire.
So whilst the picture's mixed, there was a lot more condition and restriction around
how the grants can be used, which makes it difficult for us to make sure we get the best
for Buckinghamshire out of it.
But Dave, we want to give you some more numbers on, or detail on, grants and business rates.
So in terms of the grants that weren't able to be loaded into the draught budget because
of the timing of government announcements.
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 0:31:43
I'm not anticipating there will be any bottom line
impact from those.
There will be ring fence grants will add in then
expenditure and grant income to match those
often, as the leader said.
And the conditions that are attached and some of that
detail is still coming through that we're still
working through.
So I wouldn't expect any bottom line impact to hit
the budget in terms of that.
I guess in a similar kind of vein, then the headlines
that are out there in terms of business rates changes
and what the government may or may not do,
and that detail has still not been announced,
then again, I would not anticipate there to be
a bottom line impact on the budget and the funding
set out in the PAC because the government will compensate
us as the councillors, the billing authority,
through what's called Section 31 grant,
and that's a mechanism that's kind of a long -standing
arrangement between central and local government
to do that conversation.
The businesses themselves would see a potential reduction
in terms of kind of going through, depending on what the government decides.
And we're not privy to anything more than what's in the press,
in terms of kind of going through on that.
The bit that I would be most concerned about is the timing of those announcements
to facilitate the most orderly billing way that we can manage that.
So to ensure that those businesses get the right information at the right time.
Depending on the timing when the government makes that decision,
then we may be in a place, there may be some staff time
that would be involved in managing that,
both either in terms of the billing
or in terms of correction,
of anything that has to come through.
And again, I would anticipate slash hope
that the government would fund
that additional workload requirement
through what's called the new burdens principle
and therefore would fund us for that.
But what you can see just in summary,
I think you can see the detail in the pack
is that where by year three,
we're building somewhere in the region
of 310 million pounds worth of business rates
and collecting it and taking all the action
that's needed to ensure that we collect that money,
then we'll only be retaining about 44 million pounds.
Whereas previously, then we'd be billing somewhere,
broadly speaking, somewhere in the region
of about 300 million pounds, and we'd
be retaining about 80 million pounds.
So we're retaining about half of that money.
And that money is going to central government,
who then reallocate it and send it elsewhere in the country.
Cllr John Chilver - 0:34:08
Thank you. Councillor Wilson, I think you're next.
Thank you, Chairman. Councillor Stuart Wilson. Welcome everybody, good morning.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 0:34:15
I wanted to pick up on a point that Martin started asking questions on, which is risk,
because obviously one of the things that we are charged with doing is really getting assurance on the risk of the budget process.
And I'm delighted that this year I think we've got both a risk chart and a reserves chart.
And on the basis that no good deed goes unpunished, I have questions on those.
So on the risk chart, which is page 171, I'll give you a minute to turn to it.
right back in the corporate section.
Got it.
So it talks about a 5 .8 million pounds weighted risk
and it lists a series of potential risks.
And it's great to see this
and it's got a range and some weighting.
It doesn't include any of the treasury management aspects
that my colleague alluded to,
so interest receipts and SCN cash impacts.
What it does do, though, is on the scales,
it looks at the number of about 20 to 30 million pounds
of risk.
And then, again, in terms of impact and probability.
Now, if you look down the range of that,
my concern is I think 5 .8 million pounds is low.
Because if the low side, if you took every low end,
would be 20 million, and the high end would be 30 million,
then I think we've taken a low -end view.
And I just wonder whether or not on reflection
it may be, if you look at impact for example,
the average is medium.
If you look at the probability, medium to low.
But as has been mentioned, you know,
on our revenue budgets, we quite often,
on the portfolio budgets, we end up having to overspend
and having to balance that out through corporate.
So my concern is whether or not our reflection
of our weighted risk of 5 .8 million pounds
is actually a fair reflection, given that we have
a range of 20 to 30 million pounds.
I would suggest that it's probably closer to that number.
And I think that I'd be interested on your perspectives,
particularly when you take into account the Treasury
management aspects and I obviously as we've got the benefit of on the next
slide the reserves position take into account the the comment and this brings
me on to another aspect of this question which is on the transitional arrangements
with the fair funding reform obviously we planned prudently for about 24 million
pounds of that, how are we managing that transition? Because that clearly allows
us some flexibility in terms of the budget year, which is what we need to
deliver from a balanced perspective particularly, but then the out years as
well. So it was really trying to get a sense of the risk for the budget, the one
year, understanding we've got a three -year settlement, and I have some concerns that
5 .8 million pounds is a light view
and how we're managing that with the reserves
and the transition arrangements for the fair funding review.
Thank you very much for that.
You're right.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 0:38:01
It's just acknowledged that here's the weighted table risk
and of course, and Dave will speak to this in a moment.
There's elements of judgement here.
If you could just read the narrative slightly
on the same page, but ahead of the table.
The vast majority of that is in the service demand risk,
3 .8, and that is, as I said in my opening comments,
that is with the demand that we've seen,
the demand pressure and exponential growth,
it's that service risk that is the greatest,
and that's where you mentioned
medium likelihood and medium probability.
That is the real focus that we have to have,
because as we've seen, I mentioned the three individuals a minute ago,
that's the stuff that's most likely to happen.
The general risks, and I referenced, for example, inflation earlier,
of course, is a bit of an assessment of what's happening nationally.
And so there's an element in there, and you'll see from the 0 .2 is the price risk.
So because of how close we are to market costs and where we're going,
then whilst it comes to 5 .8, it shows that where we're putting that is proportional
to where we see the most likelihood of the risk coming out.
That said, some of the general risk also relates to things like other government policy.
So for example, I mentioned DSG earlier.
If the government policy, when they say in the future,
we will take those DSG costs and handle that centrally,
also say, ah, but your deficit now needs paying back in some way,
which would be wrong to shove it onto council budgets,
that will undoubtedly have a massive impact.
So I think, whilst I hear you saying 5 .8 may or may not be enough in your view,
We've obviously come to an overall balanced judgement of where that should lie.
And then to come to our next point, in the reserves, not just for fair funding, then
there's reserves there that we would have to rely on should a risk materialise.
And in the last year, there was two or three large examples of where that's happened and
why it's important we need to have some of these specific reserves.
So for example, when NRS, who was the provider of lots of provisioning in care homes and
for residents on some of the equipment they need, when they folded, we had to work very
quickly to make sure we could continue the provision, but there was a net cost to the
council of doing that.
So risks will definitely materialise.
And therefore, having that profile in that way is trying to say, well, there's some...
at 5 .8 million to meet most of what we may anticipate there.
But of course with anything, if everything came to pass,
then we'd be back around the loop again.
Reserves on the transition, government,
and David will talk about this perhaps
in a bit more detail, we are not in a situation
where we're having to do calculations
on floor funding and elements like that.
It does mean there's quite a variance between the three years about where the impact of that formula kicks in and then through the use of reserves
We're able to smooth that out for for the period
But Dave will give you more detail on that. Over to you. Thank you
So just in terms of the balanced risk and our dependency on corporate
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 0:41:49
I think again was the point you made so I was just looking back in some historic data
and when the council had contingency previously then the average over the last four or five
years was somewhere in the region of about 4 .3 million that would be required.
So I think the 5 .8 million is not too dissimilar to that kind of figure in terms of the reliance
on that.
As we said previously, we've taken a very prudent view in terms of treasury management
and as Councillor Tett referenced then, treasury management returns are declining as the base
rate goes down based on the OBR and Banco England forecast, whether they actually go
down at that trajectory, time will tell.
So we take a very, very prudent view in terms of how we budget.
So I would anticipate that we should get some upside in terms of the actual returns that
we secure, and we take a range of other measures.
So members will be aware that we have driven down our bad debt provision as well over recent
years.
That in effect creates more cash that we can then use in terms of going forwards.
So we take all of that into account in terms of going forward.
I think the range of risks that we've got set out, the potential impact I think is accurate
and is appropriate based on where we are on the track record that we've got.
But undoubtedly that will get harder in terms of kind of going forward.
So this isn't to say that these aren't going to be difficult.
We're going to have to monitor it very carefully.
But it is going to get harder in terms of going forward.
And therefore our dependency on corporate needs to reduce as we go forward.
And therefore we need to make sure that in year then we take the appropriate
measures at the speediest rate that we can.
In terms of the profiling,
in terms of the impact in terms of fair funding,
then I would have to dig out the exact figures.
but we were a little bit up in year one
because of the prudent way
that we've taken the budget previously.
Year two is particularly bad, and then year three then kind
of is the ultimate impact in terms of kind of going through.
So there's a little bit of profiling work that we've had
to do between years one and two, and then into year three.
And we've used what's called the MTFP profiling reserve
reserve to manage that, but there is still a small residual amount of money in that reserve
by the end of year three.
Can I just come back on that?
Cllr John Chilver - 0:44:21
Yes.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 0:44:23
Yeah, I think it would be useful for the Committee, because clearly what we need to sign off on
is the overall risk profile of the budget.
So I think it would be useful for us to see that.
Equally, I share concerns about supplier failure.
And I think my other, the obvious other question,
which is something that we do get into each year,
is we have a savings target,
but then when we get into portfolio budgets
in quarter one, quarter two,
we start to have an additional action plan.
And I wonder, you know, one of the things
we might want to ask portfolio holders is,
you've now got a supply, a savings target,
but you know, where'd you go next on this?
So it's the over delivery of the savings plan
or acceleration of the savings plan
that's something we might wanna drill into.
So I think the savings plans are really important.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 0:45:16
So I remind you, 296 million from start of this council
formation to the end of this period.
That doesn't happen by accident and needs that focus
like you've said from portfolio budgets.
Part of going through this budget process was to say,
how can we deliver the savings and protect front line services at the same time at the earliest opportunity?
It was clear if we can make an efficiency saving today, you get a benefit for that in each of the three years.
I think your comment to say, where do you go next?
The reality of this situation is with demanding rise right demand rising
Exponentially is there's only so
far you can go before
further
fundamental service delivery cuts have to happen and it's only because of the sound financial management of this council since it was formed
They were able to weather this now and still have a robust
budget, but undoubtedly the challenge is becoming all the greater.
And I see some of the comments, understandably from the public, say we pay more and more
council tax and they feel like they're getting less and less, which is why I wanted to make
sure we evidence value for money at every turn.
So please do ask all the cabinet members about that and protect service delivery whilst meeting
the obligation on that growing demand.
But as I said a few moments ago, if this formula stayed for
another three years, you're just pushing, it is not a sustainable formula.
But we have to press down on every area of spend to make those savings or
an area of income to offset the need for a savings.
So you will see fees and charges are in here, where there's some increases to fees
and charges that also is another element of where council gets its money from and that's
everything from crematorium fees to car park charges to road closure fees.
So when we talk about, I think it's maybe important for me to say for those people watching,
when we talk about savings, it can be the value of the saving is an efficiency saving
that generally means doing something cheaper or some additional revenue.
but it's worth noting that actually the total expenditure on all these services
by the council, the total spend of the council, continues to rise. So it doesn't
mean there's fewer services happening. The investment is there, we're
just getting more value for every pound we spend. Yes, thank you. As you say, we can
Cllr John Chilver - 0:48:05
pick up on the deliverability of savings targets as we question other portfolio
holders this week. I think we had Councillor Huxley next.
Cllr Andy Huxley - 0:48:21
Thank you Chairman. It's really for clarity, you've covered part of the
situation but for my own understanding if I've been reliant on bank rates being
fairly stable. If we get to a stage where they escalate and got a little bit out of
hand, if you like, are we saying that we are reliant on reserves to pull us out of
the mire, if you like, or is there anything else in place that we could use
to alleviate the problem? So at the moment in Treasury, if bank rates, as in
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 0:48:59
interest rates, if that's what you mean, if that grew up, we're currently at a
net benefit, beneficiary of the rates.
But in this term, you will see that turns into a cost
because of, as I mentioned earlier,
things like the DSG money,
the change in council tax collection periods
means that the amount of interest, if you like,
on cash holdings that the council have would fall.
The biggest fear, I think, linked to that is
if they were driving up in an attempt to squash inflation.
So if inflation grew and a governmental response was to keep hiking interest rates to try and
suppress that, then we could be in the worst of both worlds because of the inflation risk
that we talked about.
But do you want to add anything more?
I think just to add that the range of other measures, we used to have a hierarchy, I guess,
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 0:49:56
in terms of actions that we would take.
So the portfolio action plans, the control measures
that we've already deployed, continued work in terms
of challenge panels, and so in terms of going on,
and the scrutiny that we take in terms of kind of recruitment
are all the normal day -to -day activities that we take.
And you can squeeze them even harder,
but there is a law of diminishing returns,
I guess, in terms of going through that work.
We then previously used to have budgeted revenue contingency and that was removed and previously
Debated by council in terms of setting the budget for this year. Once you go through those measures you're then into
either an acceleration of
Savings plans or you're into the use of earmarked reserves once you get through your earmarked reserves. You're then into the general
Reserve in terms of going through so far then we haven't really had to deploy
going to the General Fund Reserve for a number of years,
or to earmarked reserves, and we've been able to take
other measures.
So we are, we have a very strong track record of
controlling expenditure, albeit that there are
significant risks that we face every year when we set
the budget in terms of going through.
As the leader said, if interest rates start to go
the other way and start to go up again, then
potentially we would secure some additional Treasury
management income but then it would probably be to counter inflation and
therefore inflation would be going up and therefore we'd be wearing the
additional costs. One thing I would just say in terms of interest rates going up
then we're not exposed to interest rate charges on our existing borrowing
because we have fixed rate borrowing that we've taken and actually as a
proportion of our overall budget then our borrowing is is very low and is
prudent and has either been historically taken where business cases stack up and the overall
return is significant so historically for things like the EFW, so kind of the money
that we get from there, or where we're generating net savings, so in terms of things like children's
own provision going forward and where those business cases have been considered.
So we do have some existing borrowing, but it's on a very prudent level.
Just thinking in terms of other measures that we take
and that we actively review, then as I said,
then we've looked at kind of our overall levels of debt
and our unsecured debt over 90 days.
And we've been successful in terms of reducing
that from I think a high of just over 14 million down
to just over 10 million now.
And that's in really good stead in terms of going forward.
We also review all the other aspects.
So things like the amount that the council pays in pension contributions
In terms of going through and for the last three years then we've seen those pension contributions pension contributions
Reducing by 1 % each year as that was almost five million pounds worth of benefit
Up until this year and as set out in the pack
Then there's further contributions of 1 % for the next three years
That will be about another five million pounds by year three as well. So every single measure that we can then we take
Cllr John Chilver - 0:53:26
Just to say that EFW which was mentioned stands for energy from waste which refers to the council's waste disposal facility
Council crabtree, I think you're next
Cllr Anna Crabtree - 0:53:40
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I'm councillor Anna crabtree from the Marlowe Ward. I
capital programme which for my colleagues benefit is set out on page 48 of the
pack we've been provided with because obviously the spending on capital
projects underpins the savings plan and is heavily integrated into the resource
budget that we're looking at as well so I welcome the council's investor save
programme and I'm looking at first of all the first four lines of the funding that
coming in in the capital programmes where it looks to me as if there's an increase
in grants coming in of a total of about 84 million pounds. I wanted to cheque
whether or not I was reading that correctly because comparing to the
prior year the amount was coming in over four years has gone up from 309 million
pounds to three hundred and eighty three three hundred ninety three million
pounds so I'd appreciate the leader responding on whether or not he feels
that accurate and whether we are getting additional grants and if so where they're
coming from what that for there are some other very big numbers within this
capital programme funding table such as the capital receipts line which shows
that the council is expecting to receive a hundred and three point three million
pounds from I assume property divestment. This number remarkably is almost exactly
the same as in last year's budget and I just wondered given that we don't see
property valuation as a risk on the table that Councillor Wilson was
referring to how comfortable we are that this is an accurate valuation of the
properties that we're looking to dispose of this committee currently has no
oversight over that portfolio management and I think it is crucial that we
understand it better to allow us to assess the risk within the budget and how that integrates
into the revenue plan.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you for that.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 0:55:41
So the grants element, like I mentioned earlier in response to the maybe to Councillor Paul,
some bits are up and down.
So for example, the very top of that is transportation grant.
So there's two things I kind of want to say that.
One comes back to the profiling point.
So out of that, a significant portion is stuck into year four of the programme.
So actually there's no direct revenue benefit to us in this three -year MTFP period.
So that was government announcing grant allocations but phasing it and backloading it
and then suggesting the benefit is there now.
It isn't yet.
The ups and downs are such that, so I mentioned earlier, education grants.
So 8 million pounds instead of building a new school of 20 million pounds.
The 8 million pounds will not meet the cost of 150, 150, one or two,
children who need special educational need placement.
But if you look at this table in raw terms,
looks like we've got 8 million pounds more.
Yeah, but you cancel the school.
So the detail behind this is significant
because even where things have gone up,
there's an offset somewhere else.
Overall, then total grant funding,
and I couldn't work out the computation you've done
on what the numbers were, so I'll ask Dave to do that.
So there are puts and takes.
Some of it, for example, though,
is 106 money and sill money.
So that's action taken by the council.
So you may see an uplift in Sill.
So that's community infrastructure levy that relates to planning developments.
And the council are on the process of considering adding Sill to the Old Aylesby Vale area.
So at the moment this applies in the south of the county but not in the north.
So a bit like risk.
We've also had to take a fairly prudent view looking forward as to what one might expect
the SIL income revenue capital availability to be.
So parts of that are included in some of the funding.
So it's not all just easy additional money, it's based on that future forecast.
But Dave may be able to answer a bit more on the grants in a minute.
On the capital receipts element,
and it's a timely question because we just had
the conversation about borrowing,
the council has taken no new borrowing on
since it was formed.
So our capital programme, and I mentioned
over 600 million earlier, is regarded as
either coming from grant money,
so some of the money we get from government
to partly to fund things like Zener
or other bits of road programme,
But it's self financing where we look at our estate our assets and see what capital we see we get and so that is
reflected in there
Dave so when we have
Proposals to
To receive a capital receipt those things go through cabinet usually as a
here we are we're going to go and market this site and then back with the
with the resulting acceptance of offers.
David, and you hear him say this in public every time,
is there to assure we take best value.
And yet, in that profile, there is an element there
of where we think capital receipts may or may not occur.
So it's probably not too much of a surprise
To consider that the value of that won't want to fluctuate over time
But similar to the comments that that we just made a moment ago about where'd you go next? There's a limit on to
as to how many capital receipts the council will be able to retain and therefore close management of
The capital programme is key to what we do to make sure this bit of the budget doesn't swing out either
But a bit more detail for Dave.
Just in terms of the profile, and then I'll need to cheque in terms of the amounts, as
the leader said, and grants have increased.
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:00:14
And one of maybe the few upsides in terms of the new government methodology is that
we're actually getting some certainty of grant funding for four years in capital cases rather
than annually.
So that may well explain some of the difference, but we'll do the detailed reconciliation.
In terms of the totality and the deliverability
of the capital receipts then, so as the leader says,
then one of the key things is we have Section 123,
or Regulation 123 obligations that we've got to do
in terms of securing best value that we always look at
in terms of when those proposals come through.
I think it's worthwhile looking at that capital receipt schedule
in kind of contrast with our total assets on the balance sheet.
So we've got about 2 .2 million of assets on the balance sheet.
in terms of going through, and for those of you that have the joy in terms of the statement
of accounts and members that are on the audit and governance committee, then you'll have
enjoyed sets of accounts going through, but they're available to the public.
So for example, there's just over, well, just under £395 million worth of assets, which
are classified as carriageways.
So we're not in the business of selling roads, so we can't sell roads in terms of kind of
going forwards.
There's 400 odd million pounds worth of schools
that sit on the balance sheet.
So there's that going through.
So we do take a very tight view
in terms of going through.
We take external advice in terms of values
and then we take a delivery risk
in terms of what the market would be interested in
in terms of looking at those sites
as well as sites that obviously
that we do not need going forward.
So part of that, as members will be fully aware,
is the rationalisation of our office estate
that members have seen play out in those cabinet sessions
that the leaders alluded to.
So the deliverability is really key,
because you say that we want to make sure that we don't end up
with any gap.
And we've actually had a strong track record
of those proposals coming through over the last 12 months
and previously in terms of delivery
of expected capital receipts.
So I think they are deliverable and they are proportionate in terms of going through and
we are going to become more reliant on them going forwards as other forms of capital depleted
or we'll have to look at additional grants in terms of going forwards.
I think they were all the questions.
Can you just add one little bit of flavour to that as well?
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:02:49
I've talked quite a lot today about the change to government funding and I've said in previous
that part of the government formula sees spend
as a proxy for need.
Now I have great issues with that
because it means a well run council
that has driven down its cost to get past value
for the taxpayer will maybe not spend as much
for the same thing as someone else
even with various area cost adjustments being made.
One of the reasons our transport grant has increased
is because of the decisions we've made
over a number of years to invest more
into our roads knowing that was a resident priority.
As a result, and we don't have the full exemplifications
on all areas for the funding formulas,
but as a result of doing what we feel
was the right thing in Buckinghamshire anyway,
there is a benefit on that particular portfolio
in the government's approach to spend
being a proxy for need, and that has triggered more money
in the transportation grant.
Now, of course, had we not been bearing down
on the other big costs, there may have been more money,
but there'd be more waste for the taxpayer.
So there is a strange paradox within the formulas
here that plays out in so many different ways
in the detail of this.
But obviously, we would like on elements
that relate to infrastructure, with what
I said, that the government are imposing
95 ,500 homes on us, the more money
that would come through for infrastructure
needs to be there and currently it's absent.
Thank you.
Cllr John Chilver - 1:04:27
Councillor Dali, I think you're next.
Thank you. I'm Councillor Christina Dali representing Beckonsfield.
Thank you very much.
Cllr Christine Adali - 1:04:36
I've got a couple of questions relating to page, your numbering 42 and 43.
So it is the overall budget portfolio, budget by portfolio.
On the corporate costs, there are big fluctuations or increases in 2728 and 2829 relating to,
by the looks of it when I go to the corporate income,
to staff redundancies, what is the saving you try to achieve
with those costs and what is the numbers involved staff wise
or do I interpret that number wrong
and it's caused by something else?
And the other question on the following page, which is probably much easier or quicker to
answer is, you show a precept income in the leader's portfolio.
What precept are you raising?
In my understanding, that's usually something parish councils raise.
So just like an explanation there.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Could you just, you said corporate,
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:06:02
are we looking at page 42 over in your
budget buy portfolio?
Sorry, what was the line you first said?
Cllr Christine Adali - 1:06:10
If you look at year 27 -28,
there's an increase of 48 .8 %
and in the following year of 20 .5 % in outgoings.
And when I double cheque that, or cross reference that
with the corporate slide.
On page 170 in your numbering, those big outgoings relate to redundancy costs.
So I just wanted a bit more background information on that.
Because what is the savings that's achieved with that big expense going forward?
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:06:54
No, I understand. So you're looking on the line on page 42 called corporate costs under corporate items, yes?
Right, and across from where it goes, like you said, 48 .8 % increase.
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:07:11
So the corporate pay award is held there before it. So once the decision is made by SAPSI on an annual basis in terms of going through,
that's then released in effect into the portfolio budgets on an annual basis.
but it's held there corporately in order to set that out.
So it's not a significant increase
in terms of redundancy costs or anything else.
It's the budgeted amount that's been set aside
for the pay award that is held there pending the decision
from SAPSI each year.
And that is the most significant element
that changes on the budget lines.
So that year, the pay award goes up by 45 %
compared to 3 .5 % the year before?
Cllr Christine Adali - 1:07:46
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:07:48
It's the fixed amount that's kind of there.
So it doesn't mean there's a pay award increase 48 %?
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:07:55
No, it just means that pay award values,
if it flowed through in the end into pay packets,
it sits here for an hour before it gets spread.
So you'd be given the pay award is set,
Doesn't make sense.
Still for these two years,
then later on, if you see the value difference,
So for 18 versus let's say 30 as it is now,
you were talking about five million pound difference.
But the increase every year has been reasonably steady.
There it's only 48%.
Cllr Christine Adali - 1:08:26
That must be more than just pay awards.
Because if you look at the page 170, it goes from 4 .4 to.
Wait, can you give the page number again?
When you go into corporate revenue budget on page 170
It goes from 4 .4 to 8 .6 then to 15 .7 and then to 21 .2 million
Just pay it seems a bit
There must be something else in there
So yes of the pain 25 26 is the after it's been
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:09:08
removed so I'll just need to cheque some notes then I'll come back to you now
and what's the second question sorry and that's probably a bit more
Cllr Christine Adali - 1:09:18
straightforward and I've seen a preset a precept income on the deeds portfolio of
nearly six million precepts as far as I understand is raised by parishes so why
is there a precept in there where does that come from so this I think I totally
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:09:36
I think it's an interesting description given how people think of precepting.
In broad terms, this is income derived from our enterprise zones that then sit in the,
obviously, as an income to the council.
So we have some very successful enterprise zones up around Silverstone Enterprise Zone,
in and around Westcott.
Woodlands will be one that comes in around Aylesbury.
And there are some special circumstances around those,
but that's where that income is shown.
I think it's called precept.
Thank you.
Cllr John Chilver - 1:10:23
I'd just like to ask if any members would like to,
who haven't asked a question yet,
would like to ask their first question
before we move on to second questions.
I can't see anybody.
So, Councillor Tett, you had another question.
Thank you.
I know a number of members actually double dipped
on their first question,
Cllr Martin Tett - 1:10:42
so I was very frugal on my first question.
I've got a couple of points.
One is a lot of the savings rely
on cross -portfolio working, that's highlighted.
The Council's very good at delivering portfolio savings.
Historically, it's not been quite so good
at delivering cross -portfolio savings.
So my first question is, what mechanisms does the leader have in place to ensure that his
cap network collectively on those cross portfolio savings?
And then I have a second question on reserves.
Okay, so you're not double dipping on savings.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:11:16
We're just, you're absolutely right.
It's not just cross portfolio, it can be cross council at times to say, how do we have to
make sure when we're trying to get the value for money elements to make sure we don't have
duplication, make sure that we deliver on the savings and efficiencies and make sure
a saving made one place doesn't pop up with a cost somewhere else.
So the advantage of looking at the budget as a whole is it will help do that.
I spend time, well, first of all, cabinet members have to work together on particular
areas and then in and around the cabinet table and particularly going through budget sessions
and then tracking of that monitoring, we make sure that we pull out where the cross portfolio
responsibilities are.
So when we look, for example, quarterly, even at, we look at the budget out turn, I'm gonna
look at the strategic risk register to make sure that the shared ownership and realising
the pace of change and doing things in a coordinated way as is important as each one just ensuring
and delivery in their own portfolio.
And of course, the corporate directors have to work
in the same way.
My challenge is always the point I just made,
which is if we make a saving there,
we can't drive an impact on someone else's portfolio.
It's the overall value for money to the taxpayer
that's important.
So we have to see everything in the round.
And of course, there's a reliance on me
to make sure that happens as well.
But that's what happens around the table.
Cllr Martin Tett - 1:12:56
Thank you. I think, Jeremy, it might be quite useful. I don't know if this committee, i .e.
Finance and Resources, gets a regular look at how the cross -portfolio savings are coming
along. I know we can see the individual service savings. I'm just not sure how we, as a committee,
have oversight of the cross -portfolio savings. I'll just put that out there.
Just going back to reserves, this is an area, frankly, that worries me. And I know we've
discussed at some length today, and colleagues have asked some really good questions on it.
But when you look at the reserves, I mean we see that the earmark for capital purposes runs down from 40 million to
7 .6 over that period of time and
That means that there's less of a revenue contribution towards capital. We've discussed that a lot of that's going to be replaced supposedly by capital
sales
And also 30 million of increased borrowing now if you borrow
So, that means you're going to start, and we haven't borrowed up until now, that means
you're going to start incurring revenue costs on that extra 30 million, which then are susceptible
to any changes in interest rates.
And I guess what I'm asking here is what sensitivities have you taken, or have taken place around
the extra 30 million of borrowing, given the way in which the earmarked for capital purposes
reserve has been run down.
And if I can tag onto that also, I'm just a bit concerned about this DSG deficit.
I mean, it seems to be growing exponentially.
I know that the government has announced that it's going to bring forward proposals to take
future years, you know, question mark, into central government.
But we're not quite sure yet, at least I'm not quite sure yet, exactly when that kicks
in.
And also, you've mentioned already the historic deficit.
So this is accumulating at a really rapid rate at the moment.
So you've got the running down of the capital allocated reserves.
You've got the growing DSG deficit for which there is no allocated reserve,
but actually is a future liability as I understand it.
And then also you've got the use of 4 .1 million of additional reserves to profile the budget.
And these all seem, and these are all one -offs, effectively, you can't replenish those reserves.
Once they're gone, they're gone.
It's like spending savings.
I just feel slightly uncomfortable with the reserves position, but maybe the leader and
the head of finance can reassure me that this is actually a sustainable position on reserves.
Thank you very much.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:15:31
Maybe if I take the DSG one first, because we've talked about the bit already.
I'm assured that in the next couple of weeks, that's what MHCLG, the local government,
Department of Government say, they will come forward with information about the future
of the DSG grant.
I can't tell you sitting here today what that will look like other than they've said publicly,
which is future will move off Council's budget.
You just mentioned, is it a future liability?
Absolutely should not be, but we will wait to find out because of what I said earlier.
This is, if you like, the unauthorised, or rather, sorry, the authorised overdraft the
government are giving us.
But to move this money, these deficits onto Council's budgets would push an inordinate
amount into needing exceptional financial service elements.
The government needs to be fully aware of that.
I think nationally, this is a national issue,
we'll be up in the 14 billion pounds worth of deficit
for all councils on this.
I referenced earlier on the DSG that in just three years ago,
our deficit was 6 and 1 .5 million.
And the year before that, I think it was around a million.
So to show you how the graph is growing,
clearly this needs government intervention,
given it affects the entirety of the sector.
So having already discussed that, I can't give you any more certainty on the DSG for
now other than I know the real cost of holding that there, foregone interest and
things like that do play out in this pack.
It's not something that we anticipate.
It's not like we suddenly will need to immediately repay 209 million pounds,
which is what our DSG will be.
But we'll have to resist very strongly across the country if they try to put that onto council books.
Borrowing, you're right, and I mentioned a minute ago, we've taken on new borrowing.
We have envelopes of borrowing availability.
One of the things councillors often say, and we've touched on it today,
how can we use our capital to deliver savings all the more quickly?
Well, sometimes the business case is compelling enough to say, well,
although we've borrowed a certain amount, we paid some back.
Bit like an offset mortgage or whatever, you might want to actually take a bit more
down in that facility that you have in order to accelerate the expenditure.
So for example, in our children's homes, often we said, well,
we've got ten in the pipeline, can't you do them quickly?
and the business case is such that the savings you would get from the cost of the external placements
means in a limited way for those targeted points you can meet the borrowing costs of taking that
money back down without there being a new debt facility, it's still within the same envelope that
you had, in order to accelerate that spend so that you can make the savings all the sooner.
But that cost is factored into the internal business case.
So because of what you say, you're quite right.
There is a revenue cost to it.
So you couldn't say, for example,
you ruin us to suggest you would borrow hundreds of millions
of pounds when, and ignore the fact that you have to pay that back.
So the facility remains.
There's no new borrowing facility.
but in order to deliver some of this capital to save element,
then where we've paired some repayment back,
you may take, you may refloat some of that
and say actually I need to do that,
but the cost is born in the business case
and Dave will give you the reassurances around that.
And I think your third point was on the specific
capital reserve.
As I mentioned earlier, our capital programme
has to be self financing,
because there's no one riding to our aid on this.
And therefore, the reality will be if the capital receipts
don't materialise, then that will have an impact
on where we can deploy capital,
because there's little reserve left.
But, Dave.
Just in terms of the assurance on our exposure
to interest rate risk.
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:20:00
So, as the leader said, then we're repaying debt every year,
and that's based on the existing profile
and the fact that we haven't taken out any new borrowing.
I was really good with using the strength
of our balance sheet, but as members can quite
self -evidently see that when you're wearing,
in effect, a 209 million pound over -draught,
then we have limited time for that.
And that's accelerated over recent years,
but that's been something that we've been aware of
in terms of the direction of travel,
and potentially we'll be having to take out
.
They are not necessarily borrowing in 28, 29,
depending on the number of factors
, the DSG being one of them.
The leaders
are exactly correct that the DSG deficit
is not something that should fall on the
general fund and, therefore,
on Council taxpayers.
This is a debt that the government in effect is
owed,
and therefore the central government needs to
pick it up.
That's the way the dedicated schools grant is funded.
It should be met from central government expenditure,
not from local government expenditure.
And interestingly, central government have said
that from March 28 onwards, then they will be responsible
for picking up the cost of SEND provision.
And but the detail of that has not been released yet.
So exactly how that happens will be very important to us
in terms of going through.
The other point is that cumulative deficit,
The government has not formally set out how it will deal with it.
The leaders, you know, right, that is looking at 14 billion nationally.
I have my reservations, which is that the high -value council tax surcharge, which has
now been earmarked for local authority purposes, that will be used to fund and affect the borrowing
to pay off that 14 billion or so of cumulative deficit rather than it being any other purpose.
But we need to see the detail for that and that is a key impact in terms of the sustainability
Of our reserves going forward and we will need to look at that going going through
The government is acutely aware of both our position in the national position
In terms of going through and we will have to take action once that detail
Detail is set out
In terms of how that how that works. I think that was all the just just clarity
Cllr Martin Tett - 1:22:18
I just want to summarise because I'm very comforted by those responses, but the 30 million of additional borrowing that's shown
What I'm hearing is that actually that's for investor save schemes. It's not general funding of roads or anything else
Yeah
This is specifically for investor save schemes and they wash their face in terms of any incremental interest
That accrues as a result of that
I just want to make sure that we're not getting into a sort of woking
spell form type situation here going forward.
No, we're not a casino council as I think the tabloids like to say.
Absolutely not.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:22:48
This is to accelerate
and therefore have available funds to do those schemes.
And just to reassure that we would only take out borrowing
where it was sustainable, so either the business case itself stacked up.
We cannot borrow now from from the PWLB
for purely investment purposes as per kind of the guidance issued and we're in
compliance with that so we would not be in the position of a spellthorn
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:23:17
awoking or a thorough in terms of those very strange investment decisions that
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:23:29
they've made. Do you want to comment on Martin had earlier said are we is this
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:23:35
sustainable position on capital? So it's a sustainable position on capital if we
deliver the plans as set out if not then we will have to re -examine the capital
programme and look and see what flex we'd have to put into it. Thank you.
Cllr John Chilver - 1:23:49
Councillor Paul I think you had the next question. Thank you chairman.
Cllr Chris Poll - 1:23:53
Leda mentioned about the introduction of SIL in the north in the Old
assumes that SIL will be introduced. I think there are many assumptions from
local communities that SIL will be to their benefit in terms of capital
receipts or for them to do with as they please. I wonder if it could clarify if
that will be more beneficial to this budget as the assumption has been made
here or if it'll be and if it'll be more beneficial to local communities and then
also just on the children's homes understand that some are ribbon -cutting
ready or at least one but there's a backlog in their approval through
Ofsted. Thanks thanks for those two questions so on CIL if it's adopted
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:24:54
There's likely to be some additional funding available.
It stands for community infrastructure levy in the immediate vicinity through towns and
parishes.
But you're right, we've had to make a forecast in here.
But that decision to implement it continues to work its way through.
But we've had to do a forecast.
It's a fairly low forecast deliberately because again, I wouldn't want the capital programme
to be over reliant on it and of course should there be further coming that would be a boost
to the capital programme at the time but of course it's only paid because you've got development
coming down the track as well. But there is usually a proportion that's available for
the immediate locality, yes. Your second point, I can't read my own writing now, is about?
It was on children's homes being delayed.
You're absolutely right.
Cllr Chris Poll - 1:25:54
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:25:56
Some are open, some have been,
some continue to be in development,
some are at an earlier stage, obviously.
There is an increasing delay with the sign -off
being delivered by Ofsted
because they need to be inspected and approved.
And we continue to push hard on that.
The reality is that we have to incur the cost of having everything ready to go and have it all staffed up and things
And then you wait, please
Can you come and give us the ability to use it and that is stretching out now to a number of months
In fact, I know cabinet was talked about it. Is it eight months?
So there could be a long period hence why
Accelerating the capital element gets it ready. So we're in the hopper to realise those savings all the sooner
I think it's beholden on us to focus on the bits we can control in the first instance,
which is having them ready and having it scaled up and making sure in the end that the individuals
and the children using them get in there as soon as possible because it's as good for
their outcome as it is for the financial statement.
But that's the guiding light.
Is there anything you want to say?
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:27:12
Just to add that in terms of our assumptions on SIL are the receipt to Buckinghamshire Council
in terms of going through, so not the element that may flow to towns and parishes in terms
of kind of going forward.
So that element would be separate.
And just in relation to the Ofsted registration, then obviously we're in close dialogue with
Ofsted in terms of trying to encourage them as strongly as possible to bring that forward,
obviously when we're ready but the time frames that we've envisaged are built in
to the budget plan so we've not, so at the moment then everything is set out and
synchronises between the two elements. I mean overall children's residential
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:27:50
placements including the children's homes in in our savings is about 12
million pounds. It's not insignificant, hence why you know the sooner we can
Cllr John Chilver - 1:28:05
realise that with that. Thank you. I think Councillor Mehta you next. Thank you
Cllr Nidhi Mehta - 1:28:11
chair. I'm Councillor Nithimahata and I represent Aylesbury West. So a couple of
questions from me. We have been hearing that there is a lot of reliance on you
know the council tax increase to compensate you know the projected loss
of $44 .4 million and all.
So my question is, at what point does this model become
unsustainable for the residents?
I think me as a resident, that's the first question I would ask.
And yeah, if you can answer this,
and then I can pull up more questions.
Yeah?
Sure.
I mean, the reason I've been very vocal on this over a number
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:28:48
of months is because I feel it's the wrong funding formula now.
I've said it's unsustainable and I see the over -reliance the government have put in on local taxation on council tax
Has a huge impact on our residents
So from that perspective, I think we're in the realms of an element of unsustainability
over a long term already because you know a government here at the same time is saying my focus is on the cost of living
crisis have baked in their formula that we need to put counter -tax by 5 % and there's
a punishment for not financial punishment for the council if you don't do that because
you know you would just have a shortfall.
If we if counter -tax was not increased was not put in you're looking at another 30 million
pound shortfall in our in our accounts.
By the end of this MTFP period, the reliance of overall funding to this council will then
be reliant to the tune of 86 % from council tax.
And the perversity of this formula is if we were to expand the council tax base by having
more houses, then any new house between now and the end of this period, that might be
receipt to the council from that council tax because they've done the
equalisation but in three years time if they were to extend this again that
money would all be taken away despite us having more residents, more
residents wanting service, more more impact on our infrastructure so the
system is hugely flawed already for the reasons that I've set out. So coming back
Cllr Nidhi Mehta - 1:30:34
Back to your point about the savings, you mentioned that since 2020 we have a total
of equivalent of 67 % of the original net budget.
So how confident are you that further efficiencies will not tip into service erosion?
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:30:58
There are lots of councils out there who would look in horror at the kind of relative money
aspects that we have achieved, under 87 million already,
and are planned to achieve,
because when you start on that journey
and you look at the financial landscape,
it is a miserable prospect to have to deliver.
However, that's why our focus on resident priorities
and investing the discretionary amount of money
after those big four elements are covered,
is really important.
I see, as I said earlier, some people say,
pay more, cancel tax and get less.
You are getting good value for money
and a protection of services,
but that will only go so far.
So, you will see reference, for example,
our embracing of AI, for example, is really important,
but we can't overstate those things
because they have to be deliverable.
So the track record that was referenced earlier
about our ability to deliver on these savings
is a nice fillip to have because people even externally
can see you have a strong track record of doing it.
But it needs a constant focus to make sure we do that
but see it from the resident's perspective first.
How confident am I?
Well, given we're 187 million into 296,
that's still an awful lot to come.
And that's why the savings elements we're talking about,
such as the children's homes, really important.
The biggest of all that, of those savings measures,
are things like fostering.
So we will put a lot of focus
into the fostering offer for families.
First and foremost, it's the best for that,
for those who are in foster care,
and then ultimately the plans we have for our care leavers.
But we have to make that as an attractive option as possible,
from a financial point of view,
for people to take on fostering,
because that will unlock significant savings
without us having to do corporate, if you like,
council -led placements.
There is no silver bullet here for any particular area
you can move to to suddenly make sure
all the savings are okay.
It's about being focused on the here and now
on value for money and making sure
we're funding the initiatives fully
that will unlock savings elsewhere
and fostering being a good example.
It wouldn't be in the budget
if I didn't think it was achievable,
but certainly you probably tell from my tone
and what I'm saying today,
it is fiendishly difficult
and becoming more challenging all the time.
But resident priorities to get value
out of the council tax they spend,
I mentioned earlier as a guiding light,
we have to keep doing that.
And that's why we'll be very clear
and it's very clear in this pack
where some of the savings have to lie.
Just one more follow up on that, Ramay.
Cllr Nidhi Mehta - 1:34:01
So do we know which services are now
at their minimum viable operating level?
So there are statutory minimum provisions
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:34:14
in a lot of service areas.
So baseline number one is to make sure
we cover those, obviously.
Lisa Marie Williams - Service Director for Legal & Democratic Services - 1:34:22
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:34:23
But that can, there are areas where we obviously exceed that because of the
importance on service quality that people want us to do. And you'll know I
used to have the transport portfolio. You know, you can look across the comparison
on benchmarks at what point do you intervene on a pothole. We could get, let potholes
get even greater and deeper before we intervene if you wanted to and some
of our neighbouring authorities do. I don't think that's what our residents
want and so we intervene in the way that we do.
The chief exec will, in our case, will be the interim chief exec, also has to do an
assessment on staffing levels and make sure they feel that we're adequately resourced
to deliver the services that we're required to deliver.
And the interim chief exec will be here on Thursday, so I don't want to put words in
her mouth, but we have to make sure that when we've done a number of service reviews, which
has had an impact on overall staffing levels of the council.
You look at service delivery, are the financial resources
there, and are the people resources there
to deliver what is expected?
Dave will speak from the finances,
and Sarah can speak from the staffing.
But we are exceeding, meeting or exceeding,
all those statutory elements.
And then, like we do on the roads programme,
from 120 million going in, is making sure that we do focus
resident priorities and put resource where we know
it is wanted, it's resident council tax.
Just to add a couple of points, I think,
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 1:36:02
across the whole line of the multiplicity of questions
going through, is I think the fundamental point is
there isn't enough money in the local government sector,
and that is the fundamental point that needs to be addressed.
I would say that probably the government would say that from its perspective it's put more money in I think the evidence that we see locally
Would suggest that that's not entirely positive for us
And so they put some money into specific places and they've allocated money with specific ring fenced conditions
So where we have received some increases and we've seen that in terms of some of the transportation
Grants and some of the other is it's so specifically ring fenced. It doesn't really impact in terms of the council's
flexibility and the huge dependency that is now hard baked into the formula for council
tax and council tax increases going through is really, really going to make life much
more challenging going forward.
So fundamentally, there needs to be more money put in by central government into the sector
or they need to change the statutory frameworks for a whole host of services in terms of our
delivery, but until that changes, then it will be difficult.
I think in terms of, I will let individual portfolio holders
and corporate directors answer in terms of kind of cuts
or service standards going forward, but inevitably there
will be some impact as we go through.
You cannot take out 296 million pounds worth of money
without having an impact on that, but what we have to do
is still try and deliver all of those services
and meet all of our statutory obligations.
How we do that and what impact that will have
Will definitely be a facet of the budget that you all want to challenge
Cllr John Chilver - 1:37:51
Thank you very much. I think that brings us to the end of committee questions
We're going to have leader portfolio questions. Yes, if there's anything that hasn't yet been asked
I'm going to go to the next slide.
Thank you.
Okay, so if we're moving on to the leader portfolio, I'll be looking at page 52 of the
Cllr Anna Crabtree - 1:38:16
PAC, which shows the revenue budget for the leader portfolio.
I was wondering, the policy communications line of expenditure appears to be about two
million pounds higher than it was in the previous year's budget.
And I just wondered if the leader could explain what that money was being used for
in the current year budget and going forward throughout the MTFP.
Thank you.
Yeah, sure.
So service review has happened in that area.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:38:46
And obviously you'd expect there to be some changes, but
I've got Lisa Marie here to answer the question.
Lisa Marie Williams - Service Director for Legal & Democratic Services - 1:38:57
So I can provide fuller figures outside of this meeting, but
there have been changes in the wider DCE directorate so earlier last year there
was there's a change in the CMT structure where Sarah Ashmead used to be
deputy chief executive and she then moved to the children's portfolio I came
in and there have been wider changes in relation to the structure of the team
but if you'd like kind of detailed figures I can provide that outside of
Thank you.
Thank you.
Cllr John Chilver - 1:39:26
I think Councillor Dali, you're next.
Sorry.
Cllr Christine Adali - 1:39:35
I have a question regarding the rural broadband.
It's mentioned in the capital programme on page 57.
What progress has been made to date on the broadband project?
Rural broadband is an essential infrastructure to support growth across the country.
County, how will you deliver this as a budgeted investment of 300 ,000 appears rather small
given the size of the task?
What is the exact project?
This came from the Connected Counties programme, I think they've run for a number of years.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:40:07
We receive, effectively receive an income from that now as well.
This council led the way and a lot of that and making sure some of our rural areas were connected
And in fact, we've even done quite a few innovative bits
with connectivity
so for example working with neighbouring authorities and East West Rail to make sure that
Given that infrastructure was coming through that it had
Internet connectivity in it that will allow some of the more rural communities it passes through to tap into it
much of the big rollout of
of broadband outside of the Connected Counties programme
is helping connect more of the county.
But that is driven predominantly by awards on a national level.
But you will see Gigaloclea and others
who are constantly digging up our pavements and things
to deliver the connectivity.
So the Connected Counties was a specific part
of a much bigger mosaic of endeavours
to connect all our areas, but it's something that we've got delivered already.
Steve?
Thank you.
Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability - 1:41:26
And again, just to confirm, so the amount that's set out here, we brought a paper through
Cabinet earlier in the year that set out the kind of priority areas for expenditure, and
all of those have either already been delivered or are in the process of being delivered and
will be delivered for this financial year.
So as you can see from the budget trajectory,
beyond this year, there'll be no further investment
because there's no more funding available through that programme.
So does that mean that there is broadband in rural areas
Cllr Christine Adali - 1:41:56
within Bux?
Or is that just we run out of money?
So the support was it delivered?
Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability - 1:42:05
So the support was designed to make
sure we can target certain areas where there was
a lack of rural broadband, what spending the money doesn't mean is that there's a universal
coverage of rural broadband.
Of course, there were more challenges to follow.
This money was available to target some of those specific hotspots and those have been
achieved.
It's worth saying this money comes out through, you know, bidding in for various grant availability.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:42:32
So we talked about grants earlier.
things like the UK Shared Prosperity Fund
will have had a part to play.
The government have chosen to end that scheme
and instead stick money into established mayoral areas
and other metropolitan areas
through the Pride of Place programme,
both of which we are excluded from bidding into.
So this is when earlier I said there's a complex
give and take and mixed bag on grant funding.
It's exactly schemes like this
that then get starved of money.
In the same way, the government grant
that we use for our most vulnerable households
through helping hands has been cut.
It was cut last year, it's cut this year, and will stay low.
So there's lots of unseen parts.
I do think, though, the Connected Counties programme
has been very successful in reaching
a lot of our rural communities.
But it's undoubtedly, we need to keep
looking at what opportunities are available to fund
further connectivity.
And of course, digital connectivity may play a part in infrastructure in the long term
if funding was available.
Thanks.
Councillor Dillon, I think you're next.
Cllr John Chilver - 1:43:45
Thank you, Chairman.
Councillor there, villain.
Councillor Fon and Stort Poyches.
Cllr Dev Dhillon - 1:43:50
Leader, you mentioned in earlier on during the budget quite about children home saving
by building the new homes and then doing that and also about special need.
And I also see that we have actually a wide number of schools in last year or so.
Is there any scope in coming years to have another school provision or maybe a school
on special need which is definitely needed in this area that might save us money in long term?
and also with coming off new homes within the area, which obviously is going to take time, but we've got to prepare for that.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:44:34
Thank you very much, Councillor Dunne, for that. So I mentioned earlier, specifically on a special school,
we've been expecting that for a number of years, promised by government. That school is proposed to now be cancelled by government.
Instead, we have a £8 million grant for us to expand SEND units in schools.
We are already, there is aspects of that baked into our capital programme
to make sure that we work with schools that exist to have
as much provision as possible and will continue to deliver that.
But it will not have the same impact as 150 place school would have done.
Other schools in overall provision
will need to come, you're right, we've delivered Kingsborough for example here in Aylesbury,
but it usually will come on the back of new housing numbers and part of, and Steve's here
if we need to go into planning elements, but part of the assessment on housing numbers
moving forward would be an educational assessment on primary and secondary schools.
but we're not building out lots of new schools in this programme at this stage.
So I mentioned children's homes just because it's quite a relatively easy thing to get your head around,
but the capital programme will work on things like SEND units in other schools as well to achieve a similar end,
which is a better, more local provision within Buckinghamshire and an offset against those incredibly expensive external placements
to other parts of the country.
Thanks.
Councillor Tett, I think, is next.
Cllr John Chilver - 1:46:16
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Cllr Martin Tett - 1:46:17
This is a very important portfolio
that quite often doesn't get the scrutiny it needs.
Just on the broadband piece, I think
Connected County Programme has long since finished, actually.
What we've got, the government scheme
is Project Gigabit, which is centrally funded
and I think touches this county per se.
I think a lot of the grants in here are actually grants towards individual schemes in local
areas and I guess the obvious implication or the obvious question is, you know, is there
enough money in there to actually adequately address the remaining gaps in the rural network?
And I suspect the answer is no, but, you know, I look for confirmation that you think this
is adequate.
My key questions, though, were around economic strategy because if you look at the Council's
recent economic strategy which went through cabinets, and I know there was a big launch
of it.
It's very ambitious.
And yet when you look at the funding that's in here to deliver it, we see that the government
has now cut completely the Shared Prosperity Fund, which was the successor to the old European
Regional Development Fund.
That's gone.
And the enterprise -owned money appears to be virtually the only money we've got left,
which is driven through the Growth Board.
I'm asking the overall question here though about how do we deliver, given the government's
main objective, or at least it used to be, was economic growth, how do we contribute
to that adequately when there appears to be so little funding available to us to drive
those key priorities within the overall economic strategy?
Thank you, Councillor Tepp, for that.
Cllr Steven Broadbent - 1:48:02
You're absolutely right that a key focus we have is on our economic health and the economic
growth plan that we launched is vital to that.
You referenced the growth board.
So this is a body that I chair, that you established post the local enterprise partnerships that
brings together health voluntary sector, the private sector and ourselves to do a lot of
work on the economic growth of our county.
And I'm always mindful to say that plays a real impact on people's lives because
they've been able to get skilled, get a job, and support our entrepreneurs.
Buckinghamshire's economic landscape is full of small startup entrepreneurial businesses,
and we have to do everything we can to support them.
You're right, with a lack of grant funding now to help us do that, and I remind people
watching, we are one of the few areas that are a net contributor to Treasury.
So our businesses and our economy gives money into Treasury that they then
spend as they see fit using their own levels of wisdom. We do suffer from a
below national average productivity situation now and therefore it's right
that we support our economy, both our bedrock economy which is you know lots
of people who provide most of the employment really driving forward on local businesses
as well as those areas that are around the enterprise zones that were mentioned earlier
because we have some phenomenal assets.
We've got Pinewood in the south in working in creative sector.
We've got Silverstone in north on high -tech manufacturing.
We've got Medtech Elements here in Stoke Mandeville.
And we've got an emerging satellite space sector over in Westcott.
This is some amazing things.
You know, the thrusters that will put the NASA mission on the moon, they're getting
built here and designed here in Westcott.
I mean, there's some great stuff, but people in the county might say, so what?
Well, the reason is, if we have those enterprise zones and create those clusters, you've rightly
identified it, it was mentioned earlier by Councillor O 'Dahle, I think, to do with the
precept.
In other words, the enterprise zone money is the only money we have available that we
can seek to leverage to make a physical transformation
to our places to bring about to the corporate plan.
So our town centre regeneration work
will rely on the use of that money
to see greater investment into our town centres.
If we do that, we create a better place for people,
places to live, and help spin off
more support for the bedrock industries that we have.
So it is a real blow that there was no additional funding coming from government,
but as ever, we'll be resilient and say, well, let's make the most of the strengths that we have,
and we undoubtedly do have a strong set of businesses out there, to drive that inward investment into our place.
I think that's what residents would expect of us, and it's the right thing to do,
but what we can't do is clearly just drive down in our capital programme to do that.
The enterprise zone money is dedicated to economic development.
We've just got to make that work for us.
Cllr Martin Tett - 1:51:33
Chairman, can I just say to you, I mean, the role of this committee is to scrutinise this
budget.
I don't doubt for a moment the funding's very scarce on this.
It's just, it would strike me given the government's desperate need for economic growth, this is
an area we should be making as a council a very strong pitch
to government on, saying invest somewhere
that can generate strong economic growth quickly
for you.
I know that I think is a role of this scrutiny committee
to reinforce the cabinet's position on this.
It just feels massively under -resourced
in this key area financially.
Thank you very much.
I think we're going to have to stop this session now.
We've already overrun.
Cllr John Chilver - 1:52:10
and we've got fixed timings today.
So apologies to those members who haven't had a chance
to ask their questions yet.
Perhaps you could send them in by email
and we will try and ensure that they are answered.
We've also had some public questions sent in
and I'd like to thank the members of the public
who've sent their questions in.
Again, unfortunately we don't have time in this session
to address them, but there will be a written reply sent out.
So, I think we need to stop now,
because we're due to start the next session at 12 o 'clock,
which will be covering the communities portfolio.
So thanks to everybody, members and officers
who've participated, and look forward
to seeing you all again at 12 o 'clock.
Thank you.

5 Communities (Councillor Steve Bowles)

Cllr John Chilver - 1:53:35
Hello everybody. Welcome to this session of the Budget, Scrutiny, Inquiry, Task and Finish
Group. Welcome to everybody in the room, both members and officers, and also to anybody
that's watching online. This session we're going to be looking at the community's portfolio.
Delighted to have the Cabinet Member, Councillor Steve Bowles, the Deputy Cabinet Member, Councillor
Ashley Waite, corporate directors Richard Barker and Greg McArdle, head of finance for
communities Fiorello Mugari, and the finance officers which we had in the previous session,
Dave Skinner and Fiona Jump. So welcome to you all. I'd like to ask the cabinet member
to introduce his priorities and the overarching strategy for his budget and then there will
be questions to follow. Councillor Huxley.
Only very quickly, Chairman, I wondered whether I needed to declare an interest as I'm Chairman
Cllr Andy Huxley - 1:54:48
of the Alesbury Community Board. Thank you very much, that will be noted.
Any other interests?
Councillor Powell?
Cllr John Chilver - 1:54:56
Cllr Chris Poll - 1:55:02
Any other interests any members wish to declare for this session?
Cllr John Chilver - 1:55:08
If not, I think we can proceed.
Great, thanks very much Chairman.
Cllr Steve Bowles - 1:55:22
I'd like to start by just giving the committee an overview of the portfolio, key areas of focus, data from the portfolio, productivity outcomes and what I perceive as being challenges and risks in the portfolio.
You probably already know, but the functions of the portfolio include our community boards,
strategic engagement with town and parish councils, voluntary and community sector strategic
engagement, asylum and migration, armed forces covenant, resilience services, parking services,
community safety, equality and inclusion, opportunity bucks, tackling financial hardship
through partnership working on financial resilience and individual support to those in crisis,
supporting those in disadvantage through the work of our mean making every adult matter
team which works across partners to deliver better outcomes for those living with multiple
disadvantages.
So key areas of focus during this financial year will be to deliver initiatives across
Target wards through our opportunity bucks programme to improve outcomes for residents are experiencing the most hardship
community boards delivering ward level priorities through local engagement and
Facilitation to deliver councils priorities and strengthen our local communities
support local communities and our work with the
voluntary community and social enterprise
groups, with town and parish councils, and with a faith forum to build cohesive communities,
manage our response to people who arrive in Buckinghamshire as refugees or asylum seekers,
ensuring that community cohesion is promoted and minimising the impact on Buckinghamshire's
services and residents, partnership working, tackling neighbourhood crime, antisocial behaviour,
tackling domestic abuse and violence against women and girls,
supporting communities and people to have a shared sense of belonging across the county
so that people from different backgrounds live and work together with respect for diversity,
promoting financial resilience for people and communities to help those in most need.
This will be achieved through direct work with the Helping Hands team
to help those experiencing financial hardship,
as well as through wider work to build community support
with partners, implementation of the adopted parking strategy
for Buckinghamshire.
And we also want to implement the following actions
from April 2026 to address the current financial shortfall,
which we have in the parking service, which
is to introduce charges for motorcycles in our car parks,
Introduce charges in the car parks for blue badge holders with the option to purchase an annual permit,
but free parking on the street will continue.
Review fees and charges for parking every two years.
Replace the remaining end -of -life parking equipment to reduce maintenance costs.
And our MEAM team will continue to improve outcomes for people facing multiple disadvantage
by delivering trauma -informed, person -centred support
and driving systematic change in partnership
with key stakeholders.
We've got some key portfolio data.
I'll just give you some sort of headlines out of that.
We have eight community boards.
Ninety -six priorities have been established.
Over 2 ,500 registered charities
and other voluntary non -for -profit organisations.
85 targeted initiatives delivered
in opportunity bucks wards, April to October, 2025.
Parking services managed the council's 84 regulated
car parks, including eight multi -storeys,
enforcement of off -street and on -street parking.
87 assets of community value listed
as of the 24th of October.
230 community conversations have taken place with just over 1 ,000 stakeholders, helping
hand initiatives of progress through the year.
I shall now move on.
So productivity outcomes.
Opportunity Bucks focuses multi -agency efforts into Buckinghamshire's most deprived wards
with a clear programme structure, partnership sessions, budget oversights which were being
reported to cabinet.
In 2025, initiatives under this scheme have increased the proportion of young people who
leave college to a positive destination, further education, apprenticeship or employment by
19%, achieved estimated cost avoidance of approximately 750 ,000 in rough sleeping through
the Making Every Adult Matter team, supported over 360 homes
through the Energy Doctor Scheme,
and provided over 180 residents with severe mental illness
with physical health cheques.
So challenges, risks, and opportunities.
So challenges and risks that I perceive
are our capacity to work effectively
across Buckinghamshire's geography
with partners, residents and local stakeholders, but we can achieve some opportunities on that
by our remodelled community board structure.
Funding to support and integrate refugees and providing services for asylum seekers
is entirely reliant on funding from government, so we don't know what funding we're actually
going to get, so that really is dependent on that.
Within parking, the service continues to monitor reduced income, which has not recovered post -COVID.
The parking estate is being reviewed following the adoption of the parking strategy to ensure financial sustainability of the service.
And I highlighted some issues that we're using to address that shortfall earlier.
We come on to the Household Support Fund, well that ends in 2026 and will be replaced by the Crisis and Resilience Fund.
However, the Crisis and Resilience Fund also incorporates the Household Discretionary Fund
and it's the same amount of money that we used to get in the Household Support Fund,
is now going to be split between the two.
So the problem that I see that we've got is the government are actually,
by combining these two funds, reducing the money for the Household Support Fund,
are actually penalising the vulnerable people in our community,
which they purport nationally to support.
So, and over the last three years,
that funding has actually gone down.
So, government funding for supporting vulnerable adults
in financial hardship in bucks will be about 800 ,000K less
than the funding provided in 24 -25,
as for the last two years, funding has gone down.
Opportunities, so what do I see as major opportunities?
Alignment of work between community boards and
Opportunity Bucks programme along with the engagement
facilitation and local stakeholders will ensure we
have good visibility of those priorities and
challenges at a local level and we can use that to
inform what actions that we need to take.
Opportunity Bucks initiatives are designed
to reduce future demand for services and improve outcomes across a range of domains including
health, education, employment and quality of life.
We continue to seek bidding opportunities to help funding electric vehicle charging
points and active travel schemes across Buckinghamshire and we're going to deliver a new outsource
parking enforcement model in order to increase capacity, increase compliance and reduce instances
of dangerous and inconsiderate driving.
So I think finally what I'd like to say is
that we actually deliver about 1 ,300 services giving best value
for money.
We have a robust budget and we're confident,
we're very confident in that.
Yeah, okay, it's been tough.
The government are taking away 44 .4 million pounds away from us
in so -called fair funding, but I've got every confidence
in our balanced budget going forward.
I think that's all I'd like to say at this point.
I don't know if any officers would like to add anything
or actually got anything to add.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Councillor Boles.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:04:49
Anything from you, Dave, on this portfolio?
Dave Skinner, anything on this portfolio
you wanted to mention?
Okay, we can move straight through to questions now.
Thank you.
I think the first person was Councillor Dillon.
Thanks.
Thank you, Chairman.
Cllr Dev Dhillon - 2:05:12
Thank you for your further update, Councillor Boles, on this portfolio.
In last year's budget scrutiny committee meeting, we had a huge concern about community board.
And I'm glad that in today's report you mentioned
that you had 96 project fund delivered from April to 20,
from April till October, which I'm very glad to hear that.
I would like to know how would they fund it?
And you're asking about another priorities in coming future.
Is there any scope in your budget that we can deliver that
and how the community boards are doing as we go forward?
Yes, I think there is scope within our budget for that.
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:05:55
Richard, is there anything to add on that point?
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:06:04
I think the only thing I'd add to Councillor Dillion is obviously there's been a significant change and shift in terms of the approach that we've taken with community boards following previous Council's decisions on the budget.
So there's been a significant reduction in the funding that's available through community boards. We've moved to the eight board model
we're moving towards a
philosophy of facilitator rather than funder of projects
but we're very much still able to engage with a number of other community organisations and
parties to deliver against the priorities that have been agreed. We've had a very
comprehensive programme of community engagement activity
which you'll be aware of through the early part of this year to determine key
priorities for board areas and working with the different stakeholders to help
achieve against them. So I think we're feeling confident in the new model.
It is a change in terms of what had gone before. As I said, there's less focus on
funded projects, more focus on facilitating partner engagement, but as
I say, we feel confident in the new model albeit it's still
relatively early days.
Yes, the part of my question is that you asked that 96 project
has been delivered.
Cllr Dev Dhillon - 2:07:15
Who funded them and how did we facilitate them?
Yes.
They've been funded by joint working with other agencies plus
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:07:28
the funding that's been available.
And just to add, the funding that's available through the
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:07:37
reserve arrangement as well, but it's a mixture of arrangements.
Some, when we actively encourage third -party contributions towards some of those projects
as well, so some of it was within the reserve that's allocated within this budget, others
third -party funding contributing towards it.
And the fact that there's also been sort of examples of matched funding, which we've had
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:07:57
in the past as well.
Thank you.
Councillor Wilson.
Thank you, Chairman, and good afternoon to everybody.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:08:08
Welcome to parking.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 2:08:10
And Mr. Barker will not be upset to get that.
Mr. Barker will not be surprised by my question.
I was surprised to see in the pack
that we are looking to increase
the cost of parking operations,
but I couldn't see any benefits
from the parking enforcement procurement exercise that we're going on in terms of
income. So my understanding from senior officers in the transport team who've
overseen this in the past is you don't have to write that many tickets to pay
for a parking enforcement officer in a day and I think we'd all welcome, as Mr.
Barker knows, to get more parking enforcement. So I want to understand how
the budget reflects the procurement exercise that is underway because I
can't see any increase in income, I'm seeing an increase in cost and I am
particularly concerned about an additional cost for blue badge holders
£400 ,000 benefit in our own car parks. Quite frankly I'd rather we didn't
charge blue badge holders and we were writing more tickets for those people
that continue to park irresponsibly on the street. So I don't get a sense that
we're seeing any benefit in the exercise that we're about to get undergo for the
duration of this budget and MTFP and in fact we're seeing an increase in cost so
perhaps you could go into that a bit more detail. Regarding charging for blue
badges in car parks I think I'm right in saying I'll be corrected by officers but
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:09:51
I think we're one of the very few councils, in fact,
neighbouring councils around that don't actually charge
blue badge holders in car parks.
And given the fact of loss of income or income going down,
I think once we've got this new model in place,
there will be more enforcement officers there.
And I think that we'll find that in time,
once that's been running for a while,
that the income will reverse and we'll be making money
so we won't be losing money.
We seem to be incurring the cost
but not getting the benefit in this budget, so.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 2:10:36
If I could just add to that, Chairman, if that's okay.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:10:40
So the existing MTFP, so within the current budget,
there is a significant shortfall in terms of parking so the transition
towards the outsourced model for enforcement will help to achieve and
support the delivery of the existing budget which is why you're not seeing
any further changes in the budget that we're proposing going forward. The other
thing I would just add is that the whole purpose for the shift in the
enforcement arrangements in terms of the outsourcing that we're progressing with
is very much around driving compliance and of course there is a there should be
a financial consequence to that but the the purpose is very much around
compliance within our within our parking service and you know that's at the heart
of the change that's been being promoted but as I said the reason you're not
seeing the shift in income is because there is a significant shortfall already
and part of the rationale for the change is to help us achieve the existing
budget. Perhaps it's the wording on page 78 it says increase in parking
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 2:11:43
operation costs as opposed to decrease in parking operations income and if it's
income versus what was the MTFP I can sort of understand that as an ongoing
issue but this suggests we've got an increase in cost which presumably is
headcount and yeah thanks Councillor Wilson so that
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:12:06
So that line which I think you're referring to is 256 ,000 in year one rising to 422 in year three
relates to a number of other
costs. So for example the maintenance of the car parks premises costs inflationary costs associated with
contracts for
delivering the services as well. So there is there is a significant cost base for
delivering the parking service and that's what this line refers to in terms of some of the increase
increases in those cost lines.
So perhaps we can see an upside on parking enforcement to the budget when that comes
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 2:12:39
in on income, compliance and income.
Thank you.
Councillor Snee.
Thank you.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:12:48
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 2:12:52
I'll take another question from me on the parking aspect that's just been talked about.
I'm interested to see that there's no incremental revenues really from parking, but I'm glad to hear you said there was extra staff.
Because when we start ticketing for parking on pavements, which is going to be the next thing, can you factor that in please to the numbers?
Because I'm sure we're going to make an awful lot of income from all of these people parking on pavements.
That's the first one.
Yeah, thanks for that.
It's difficult because we don't know,
we haven't started that process yet,
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:13:32
and we're here to only address the budget that's in front of us,
but I do take that point.
And one of the things about outsourcing it is that it gives us
much more opportunity to enforce the issues that we've currently got,
Because we haven't got a full complement of parking enforcement officers at this moment in time and by
Outsourcing it
There will be more resources to actually in enforce
Parking issues and I yeah
I'm quite pleased to have seen that the government are now going to push it out
To the rest of the country that we can stop this parking on pavements because it's a real pain
I mean in my ward people park on the pavement to drop kids off at school and you've got
people coming down the footpath with push chairs then having to go out into the road to get around the park park vehicle so
For one I'm all in I'm all in favour of that
Great thank you
my second question
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 2:14:42
I'll actually forgot to state. I'm Trevor Smith Marsh in Nickelfield High Wycombe on perished area
The second question won't surprise you is around the High Wycombe Town Committee and
You may not be aware that it's changing the way it functions and the way it operates
And I know you work closely with town and parish councils
And how do you see yourself working with the new vision?
And the way that High Wycombe Town Committee wants to work
Well, we're working with the High Wycombe Town Committee in the way that we've always
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:15:16
worked with them in that, you know, they are a committee of this council.
They aren't a perished area, as you quite rightly say.
And any financial decisions that the Wycombe Town Committee wants to make have to be approved
by us first.
and we will continue working in that way.
And third and final question.
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 2:15:46
I'm looking at your numbers on page 79, expenditure
and opportunity books and also community board projects.
And what I'm trying to understand is what is the make
up and the split between the staff to actual spend ratio?
And the reason I'm asking this question is
If there's a massive resource in staff, but very little that they've got to spend to deliver projects,
should we be looking at changing the staff to spend ratio a bit?
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:16:24
I shall have to take some advice on that, because I'm not up to speed on the staff spend ratio,
But all I will say is the Opportunity Bucks Scheme has
been an exemplar that this council have put together.
And in the recent peer review, they were really impressed that
a unitary council that had only been going for five years is
running a scheme such as this to help the most vulnerable and
disadvantaged residents that we've got.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:17:00
If I could just add, I think it's, I mentioned the shift between the two arrangements that
we've had with community boards from last year to this year with the eight board model.
This is a much stronger focus on facilitation, less of a focus on direct funding of projects
and that's reflected in terms of the breakdown of the spend.
and we can certainly provide the committee details
of the breakdown for both opportunity bucks
and community boards, staffing spend and projects spend.
Thank you, Councillor Huxley, I think you're next.
Thanks, Chairman.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:17:29
Cllr Andy Huxley - 2:17:32
Apologies that I didn't give my name early on.
I'm Councillor Andy Huxley for Aylesbury East.
My question will be on, is on parking.
again. We have a situation in Aylesbury where I think parking is key to the
success of the town. The footfall is not ideal. I've lived in the town for over 50
years now and seen a decline in that situation. But I would refer to the the
water side, or the car park opposite the water side, we've seen the number of spaces reduced
over the years, although it's just gone up slightly recently because of the demolition
of the bingo hall in the high street and access through from the high street.
My concern is over the ticketing arrangements that some machines give a ticket, some machines
don't give a ticket, it's on a contact list or on a card basis and it becomes very confusing
I think to people.
There is limited access at the weekends and as a result of that you could find yourself parking quite considerable distances from a parking machine.
As a result of that you get a situation where some of the ticket machines may not be working properly and you've got to find somewhere else.
What I want to know is whether these machines are going to be standardised into probably
all not providing a ticket so that once you have paid your fee you could just walk away
without going back to your car to put the ticket back in.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for that.
That's the Exchange Street car park you were talking about.
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:19:51
I park in that quite a lot and I'm not aware that any of the machines give a ticket.
The ones I've used in there have always been contactless ones.
There are, I think, at least four machines which give tickets.
Cllr Andy Huxley - 2:20:11
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:20:13
Okay, well I've used the one in the middle, the one at the top and the one to the right and they're all contactless.
Yeah, you will.
But anyway, I think as I mentioned earlier,
we are looking at replacing our out -of -date machines.
And we will bring those all in line.
And I would envisage that we'll bring them all in line
with contactless payments.
So that's a rolling programme that's going on.
It's something we can't sort of achieve that overnight,
Because we're looking at the whole of Buckinghamshire all of our car parks, but that is something that we are working towards
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:20:58
Thanks, Jim if I can as the cabinet members said and council actually we inherited the council inherited a
variable arrangement of parking equipment with different legacy providers from the previous
district councils we've invested quite significantly actually over the course of the last 18 months to
improve a lot of that equipment which was dated approaching end of life needed
some significant investment there is still some variability which we
recognise within this budget going forward we've looked to address that
through some additional capital investment and we as a member mentioned
we'll work towards standardisation as part of that process and it's likely
that there'll be ticketless machines going forward because they that they're
far better to maintain and a good customer experience overall the only
I just add is that the vast majority of our
Transactions for paid for parking are through online applications. We've been able to extend that through a payment portal now
So it's not just a reliance on one particular provider
There's a multitude of different providers that our residents can use as part of that
That payment arrangement
Thank You
Councillor Darling.
Good afternoon.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:22:08
Cllr Christine Adali - 2:22:10
I've got two questions, one on the Bucks Lottery and the second one on evolution.
So my first question on Bucks Lottery, what income is the lottery generating to justify
an expenditure increase of 106 ,000 in running costs and is it continuing because there doesn't
seem to be anything?
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:22:36
I haven't got the information to hand on as how much money the lottery have raised so I don't know
if any Ferella or Richard have got that information to hand. Thanks Steve we might need to confirm the
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:22:54
exact figure but the annual income last year for the lottery in terms the income achieved was just
over a hundred thousand so I think this is a balancing figure like you're seeing
in the budget pack today. So basically it's raising but it's spending more or
less. Correct yeah it's a self balancing arrangement so the income that's achieved
Cllr Christine Adali - 2:23:06
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:23:08
through the lottery is then invested in community projects. So why are we running it then? Is it supporting causes or?
Cllr Christine Adali - 2:23:17
A variety of different community projects yeah that's that's what the
lottery money is used to invest and fund.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:23:22
So that doesn't seem to be a...
You just said that it's not actually raising any excess.
Cllr Christine Adali - 2:23:28
So how are we spending anything on communities then?
Sorry, the surplus income achieved through the lottery
is then invested in community projects.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:23:37
Yeah, so surplus generating, but that surplus is used to
invest and fund community projects across the country.
Which in 2026, 27, it's not planned to generate?
Cllr Christine Adali - 2:23:50
or wiser than an, now I'm really confused, sorry.
I know it's not, in the grand scheme of things,
not a lot of money, I'm just still confused
why we are basically running it.
If it's costing us and we don't actually have anything
to disperse in that case.
Yeah, I think it's an issue of what's presented
in the budget pack.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:24:09
So there's a surplus reserve that's generated
through the lottery and the net surplus is used
to invest in community projects.
So it is a surplus generating endeavour.
And as I say, it's the reserve that we access
through the community lottery that's used
to fund those projects.
But it's net surplus generating.
Okay, I'm leaving it at that confusion.
Cllr Christine Adali - 2:24:35
My second question was on devolution.
Devolution of services to town parish councils was a key part
of unitary plans and could result in financial savings
for the council while progress has been made in this area,
especially representing Bakersfield, we're very keen to
engage in devolution projects and it seems to be quite difficult to get them off the ground.
Thank you, you're quite right. Devolution was an important facet of our unitary
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:25:03
proposal and that work continues. There is a new
devolution
agreement contract for one of the better word coming out shortly going to town and parish councils
As I understand it and that's something that we we do want to move move forward
Yeah, thank you chairman
So as the cabinet member says we've got an established evolution policy
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:25:33
Tan parishes are able to engage with the council in terms of their proposals for
Devolution projects we've taken a number of those through
Since the start of this unitary council
I think the biggest and best example of that's probably our highways devolution. So we've got a huge number of participants in town and parish councils
Delivering highway services as part of a devolved arrangement. I think there's something in the order of 90
Participating town and parish councils through that more recently
Aylesbury Community Centres would be a good example more more recently over the course of the last few months where we've
previously been delivering those through the unitary council, Aylesbury Town Council
showed an interest in appetite to take those on. We've managed to get that
devolution agreement over the line but there is an established devolution
policy and it's open for town and parish councils across the county to engage
with us in terms of their ideas and areas of interest. I mean I know from
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:26:35
visiting my parish councils that are within my ward there, one of them is
quite keen to take on some of the grass cutting
that we currently do.
And I think they're in discussions with the council
at this moment in time.
So I would encourage all parish councils
to look at possible areas that they can take off of us.
I mean, given the pressures that we've got,
we all know the pressures that we've got on our budget.
So anything that we can devolve would be good,
as far as I'm concerned.
Thank you. Councillor Crabtree.
Thank you.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:27:11
Cllr Anna Crabtree - 2:27:14
I'm in danger of going back to parking as several other councillors have already mentioned.
I'm interested in the capital again and the investment of about a million pounds in parking provisions.
And I'm just concerned about whether we're investing appropriately in parking provision and enforcement to support local businesses and residents.
In my ward of Marlowe we get a lot of complaints about the adequacy of the parking availability.
Obviously it then ties into economic growth in terms of whether people can actually get
to the shops because they often can't park to go and visit them.
And also we've taken some parking spaces out to enable more electric vehicle charging,
but that just actually reduces the number of spaces available for other vehicles.
And the second part, related question to do with the blue badge holder assessment.
I can't see any direct mention of this in the equality impact assessment and I just
feel like this is a very key example of something that you would have thought would have an
impact on different members of the community and I think it would be much better if we
could see some of those details set out in the equality impact assessment.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks for that.
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:28:24
I'm actually meeting one of Marlowe's councillors, Alex Collingwood, on Wednesday to look at
parking issues in Marlowe. I was actually born and bred in Marlowe, lived there for
the first 21 years of my life, and parking has always been an issue in the town. And I think
we'll see the benefits or our outsourcing of the enforcement model because as I said earlier there's going to be more
enforcement officers the
Companies that we're looking at have these mobile camera vehicles as well that that can travel around so I
think
If we're all sitting here this time next year, we will have noticed a real improvement in parking enforcement
and your comment regarding the blue badge, we can take that away and make sure that that's included.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:29:31
Just going to the parking assets, I'd note that we're undertaking a comprehensive parking asset review of all of our car parks
and that's due to report back to cabinet over the course of the next couple of months
and that will look at occupancy, utilisation, condition of the asset and make a series of recommendations around the future look.
And that would very much address your concern, I think, Councillor Crabtree, around usage, demand, you know, the local economy,
different nuances of different parts of the county, making sure that our asset base reflects those different needs as well.
In part, the capital investment will help with that.
So that covers some of the issues we've covered already today around things like parking machines, signs and lines,
some of the basic kind of maintenance requirements of the car parking assets as well.
This is a specific fund for a WICN parking review as well, which is something that the Council has previously committed to bringing through.
So that's part of the capital investment that we'll be looking to deliver.
And I think as the cabinet member said, in terms of the equality impact assessment that has been considered, but that's something we can provide offline.
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:30:40
Just to come back, actually, I was actually in Marlowe on Saturday afternoon, and I tried the car park behind the Sainsbury's.
That was actually absolutely full. Tried the one down by Court Gardens. That was full.
Managed to get a space because someone was pulling out in the one behind Liston Hall, and the High Street was just chock -a -block with cars as well.
So yeah, totally understand.
I mean, ideally, if there was a plot of land in Marlow
that could be made into a car, another car park, that's,
you know, or extending an existing car park, perhaps,
if money was available, that's what's needed.
And I think it's a sort of perverse benefit
of Marlow being a real town for a destination.
With all the restaurants, it's got the independent shops,
et cetera, people want to go there.
And we've got other towns throughout the county that are the same that are attracting people.
Parking is always going to be an issue, but we're looking at addressing that.
Thank you very much. I've got Councillor Tetney on the list.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:31:50
Cllr Martin Tett - 2:31:53
Thank you, Chairman. I just observed maybe everyone's going to Marlowe for the restaurants
of a particular individual who's quite high publicity there, I don't know.
I've got a series of quite quick, easy questions.
One is, I just want to confirm, the Opportunity Bucks programme
appears to be funded entirely from reserves.
Is that correct?
I'm looking at page 79, expenditure relating
to Opportunity Bucks programme, $1 million.
And I'd also just tag on to the end of that,
how sustainable is that going forward if you're funding
that programme from reserves?
Secondly, you are looking to replace your parking machines.
If I read this correctly again,
you've got a 1 .1 million capital against that.
How have you looked at the payback on that?
Because that's quite a chunk of change.
On the other hand, is it enough?
And how does that cost in?
Maybe you could reassure this committee,
because we're looking at the finances rather than policy,
that actually this is actually good value for money
and has an adequate payback period.
And thirdly, my most significant question from my point of view,
the Community Safety Fund is, I believe,
partly funded by the Police and Crime Commissioner,
or has been historically.
The Police and Crime Commissioner clearly
is going to be abolished shortly.
What assumptions have you made about that fund going forward?
Have you assumed that the fund will
continue at the same level, a higher level, a lower level?
and what thinking has been done around the sustainability of that fund,
given the proposed abolition of the post. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that.
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:33:36
I think you're absolutely right that the opportunity bucks it.
That is funded from reserves, yeah.
And I take the point that, you know, you can only take something out of reserves once,
and then the reserves diminish.
but it's such an important initiative, Opportunity Bucks, that we
we need to carry on with that because, you know, we've got vulnerable residents
that we need to look after. Obviously we'll, you know, continue to
monitor it, look at other avenues of funding, but that's one aspect of the
lack of funding that we're actually getting from central government that's
that's affecting us. Do you want to add anything? Thanks Steve, yeah so just to confirm Opportunity Bucks is entirely
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:34:25
reserve funded. We've managed to extend the programme just by one year through
again decision of the previous council because of additional funding
contributions that we've had through partner organisations as well so on
average it's about 1 .2 million pounds per year. We've got sufficient funding for
opportunity box to the end of this MTFP period within the current reserve, but as I said,
entirely reserve funded. I was just going to add on the parking payment machines, if
that's okay. So as I said, it's been a challenging issue historically in terms of the legacy
equipment I referred to previously. As part of helping us to meet the current shortfall
within the parking account, we're proposing to invest in addressing the remaining end
of life equipment in terms of the parking payment machines. That's a further 50 machines
that we would look to replace.
The maintenance cost of those is about 300 ,000 pounds a year,
and that would make a positive contribution to meeting
the existing shortfall.
We've been very, very pleased with the recent batch
of parking payment machines we installed.
Last financial year, we've got a very positive commercial model
for those, whereby the provider of the machines
is responsible for the maintenance as well.
So that helps to mitigate it from our perspective
and makes it commercially advantageous for the operator to make sure those machines are up and running as well.
And so the commercial model really helps with that and is able to eliminate that maintenance expenditure,
provided the Council approved the budget going forward.
A response on the Community Safety Fund and Police and the current Commissioner.
Cllr Martin Tett - 2:36:02
I'm sorry, just to cheque, if it's 1 .2 million funded entirely from reserves,
Why does the reserves sheet 79 only show 1 million?
Sorry, it's 1 million net expenditure, you're right.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:36:18
It's only 1 million from reserves.
1 million net per year.
So it's not funded entirely from reserves.
Cllr Martin Tett - 2:36:27
It's funded entirely from reserves,
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:36:31
but it is 1 million net expenditure per year.
Yeah.
Not sure I totally followed that, thanks.
Cllr Martin Tett - 2:36:40
So the police and crime commissioner and the assumptions around the ongoing contributions
from the police?
Craig.
Thanks.
Craig McArdle - Corporate Director for Adult Social Care - 2:36:52
So yeah, as Councillor Tepp rightly points out, the police and crime commissioner's office
will be ceasing from May 28th, which is the last year of this MTFP.
It sits outside the MTFP, Councillor Teck, because it actually funds bespoke projects,
which are decided by the Safer Books Board in terms of those. Those are all built into the
life cycle of the next two years. We've built no funding assumptions post that date in terms of
those projects and they fund a variety of things like action against knife crime, youth
work, they're also supporting us with modern slavery, etc.
So they're really valuable budget but they sit outside the our MTFP assumptions.
In terms of future funding I think we'll be lobbying quite hard as a local authority to
make sure that that money returns home back to local authorities after being elsewhere.
Just from the point of view of this committee and our finance responsibilities that money
Cllr Martin Tett - 2:37:51
is guaranteed up until May, 2028.
Yeah, that's funding another number of projects.
It's not actually built into the base project
Craig McArdle - Corporate Director for Adult Social Care - 2:37:59
because it goes through the Safer Books Board
and is administered through that route.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Councillor Mehta.
Thank you, Chairman.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:38:08
I'm Councillor Ndimehata, I represent Aylesbury West.
Cllr Nidhi Mehta - 2:38:13
So my question is based on page number 69
and then the commentary reference page 7, 10 .2, 10 .3.
So basically the report states
that the most proposals are still high level
and the impacts cannot be fully assessed.
So how can the members be confident
that communities most affected
by cost pressures are adequately protected at this stage?
So the question is?
Okay, so I'll just start over again.
Your report says, and this is 10 .2,
that the most proposals are still high level
and impacts cannot yet be fully assessed.
So the question is, how can members be confident
that communities most affected
by cost pressures are adequately protected at this stage?
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:39:18
Well, I think members can be sort of satisfied with that in that, you know, there's a constant review of where we are with these various things.
So we're constantly monitoring.
Thanks Chairman.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:39:38
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 2:39:41
Just to add that as this Council has generally set out, then the budget will set out a different
range of proposals.
In most cases, then detailed proposals will then come to Cabinet in due course for more
detailed considerations scrutiny at that point, then the detail will start to emerge.
But, you know, we can either, we can't set out in detail all of that at this point in
the year, especially where some of those things are three years hence.
But pretty much everything comes through to cabinet for detailed consideration in a timely
manner to line up with the timing set out in the budget.
So hopefully that gives you some assurance that the detailed considerations will be considered
through that normal democratic process.
Thank you
Councillor Lomita. Councillor Powell.
Thank you
Cllr John Chilver - 2:40:31
Cllr Chris Poll - 2:40:35
Mr. Barker you just mentioned the figure of
1 .2 million where 1 million on the opportunity bucks budget line is is
stated. Were you then referencing net of VAT?
No, Councillor Powell. So just for absolute clarity, the Opportunity Bucks programme is
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:40:57
fully funded through reserve. The budget provision is, as you've seen in this pack, a million
for next year and the year after, and then reduces slightly after that for the third
year. And that's the full reserve provision that the Council's previously approved towards
this programme. The figure I referred to previously was actually this year's current expenditure.
It was a gross expenditure, but that's offset partly by third party contributions,
which has reduced the overall net figure to the council, which is where it's balanced out.
But the budget that you've got in front of you is absolutely correct.
A million each year for the next two years reduces slightly,
and that's the full reserve provision that we've got for the programme.
Cllr Chris Poll - 2:41:42
Just to be clear, last year's budget was 1 .2, or last year's expenditure was 1 .2,
which was the net that you referred to.
Of that order, I think that's right, yeah.
Thank you, and my question for the cabinet member.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:41:52
Cllr Chris Poll - 2:41:55
I was a little bit lost on the tables of figures
and everything, but the one question that I had
on the expenditure relating to
approved community board projects,
it doesn't mention any underspend.
Has that been figured into these accounts somewhere?
Richard, have we figured in, factored in an underspend?
We haven't, I don't think there is an underspend, is there?
No, nothing that's factored in at present.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 2:42:27
I mean, I think it's fair to say that we're working across all eight board areas
in terms of delivery of projects this year,
and we're working on the basis that all of those projects
will be fully delivered this year.
But as I say, it's very much a work in progress.
Sorry, just to be clear, I understand that,
and I know we're looking at this year's budget,
Cllr Chris Poll - 2:42:47
but next year there may be a change,
things stay the same,
but it's factored in that there may well be a saving
because of the work that the managers do
in getting alternative sources of funding
results in an underspend
of the allocated quarter of a million pounds.
Well, that's down the line in the future, isn't it?
Yeah, it'll be next year,
but I don't see that there will be.
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:43:13
I think we'll fully expend the monies that we've got.
Because monies, we've reduced monies
that community boards have had.
And although they're there trying
to facilitate getting other sources of funding,
the budget that community boards have,
I just believe that that will be fully spent.
It should be fully spent.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:43:46
And next we've got Councillor Ayut. Thank you Mr. Chairman. My question about parking. Do we have enough
Cllr Mohammed Ayub - 2:43:54
park attendance? The appearance of the enforcement team in my vote is zero. I
represent the Council of Greater Oak Ridge vote.
Councillor Muhammad, are you cast a vote in Oak Ridge Road?
Do we have enough parking attendance?
The enforcement in my area is almost zero.
So I have seen people parking on zigzag lanes, zebra crossings, on illegal dumping.
Zukie, can you please explain?
Yeah, thank you. I think your question, I apologise, but I've got blocked tears this
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:44:36
morning. I think your question was about number of parking attendants, etc. You know, part
of the proposal to actually outsource that is to make sure that we got more enforcement
officers, which we will have. So the level of enforcement will increase.
Yes, definitely need to increase number of parking enforcement team and attendance.
Because at the moment I have seen people parking anywhere.
Cllr Mohammed Ayub - 2:45:07
They leave their car and just disappears and they leave their cars for days and days.
I'll take your point and I mean I'm getting that from all over the county at the moment
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:45:21
with inconsiderate parking, etc.
But as I've said numerous times, that's one of the reasons that we're outsourcing
enforcement is because we haven't got the capacity in -house to deal with that.
And by outsourcing it, then the incidences of issuing tickets for inconsiderate dangerous
parking along the lines that you're saying will increase.
will have more enforcement.
We're running out of time.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:45:59
I know Councillor Wilson has wanted to ask a question,
so I think we'll have to make this the last one.
And if we could keep it on the answer short, please.
Thank you, Chen, thank you for squeezing in.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 2:46:14
On page 75, and I think Mr. Barker said,
I think we need a lot more detail
on the partnerships and communities line,
because we've just got one line there.
And I think that's where community boards are.
Last year, community...
this committee recommended a review of the proposal.
And also picking up your comments,
cabinet member, on the LGA peer review,
it did note the positivity and said,
well, you might want to look at extending that across the county
and in particular, because clearly we have rural deprivation
in a number of our wards as well.
And I wonder whether or not this is an appropriate opportunity with that LGA peer review to consider
the synergies that we could get.
But we already get synergies in the opportunity box awards between community board work and
opportunity box.
And whether or not this is an opportunity when we look at this going forward from a
budgetary point of view, whether it makes sense to now look at taking the opportunity
to look at the benefits that we could do.
Maybe that's an action that we can note for a report that maybe the budget stays as it
is, but as a Finance and Resource Select Committee review point, we look at the synergies that
already exist in the existing areas because I think there is undoubtedly some overlap.
And I think this, so we could deal with the detail, but I think that's a question for
noting.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for that.
I think that's one of the things I mentioned in the opportunities that I was talking about
Cllr Steve Bowles - 2:47:56
was the alignment of the work between community boards and opportunity buts because there
There is a synergy there and we need them to work closely together because what we don't
want is Opportunity Bucks team doing a project, Community Board team doing a similar project,
need to work together and that's a synergy that we're working towards.
We have captured that in terms of potential recommendations from this committee.
Cllr John Chilver - 2:48:24
So apologies, we've come to the end of this session, so apologies to members who didn't
have time to ask their questions, but you can send them in by email and they will be answered.
So thank you everybody, members and officers, for your attendance and participation.
We've come to the end of this morning's session. We start again at 1 .30
when we're looking at the transport portfolio. So see you again later. Thank you.
Start again

5 Communities (Councillor Steve Bowles)

Cllr John Chilver - 2:48:59
We're on now we're on it
So welcome back to everybody
both members officers
for this next session
Which is on the transport portfolio. I'm delighted to welcome council Thomas Broom cabinet member for transport
his deputy cabinet member councillor Peter Martin
corporate director Steve Bambrick and Richard Barker
Head of Finance for the Service, Fiorello Mugari.
And once again, we have Dave Skinner and Fiona Jump
from the Finance Team.
So welcome everyone.
And I'd like to invite the cabinet member

7 Transport (Councillor Thomas Broom)

to present the priorities and the overarching strategy
for his budget before we move to questions.
So, Councillor Broome.
Marvellous, thank you chair and thank you everybody for having us here today. I'm delighted to be presenting you with our
Cllr Thomas Broom - 2:50:04
plans for the next few years in the transport sphere through our through our budget.
And obviously it's quite a it's quite a large and wide -ranging portfolio
transport. We are we are covering everything from you know, very significant resident priorities like roads,
potholes, resurfacing, that kind of thing.
We're also covering drains and gullies,
EV charging infrastructure, home to school transport,
which is a particularly salient point in terms of the scale
when we're looking at budget commitments.
So I just wanted to walk you through
a couple of bits and pieces.
I won't detain everybody long,
because I know that in this particular area,
members have a lot of questions.
But the things I would highlight are obviously the first and I think main thing in terms
of resident priorities is the 120 million pound road programme.
Obviously in the last council term that was escalated from 100 to 120 million because
of the fact that it is such a central priority for residents.
I think there are very few members for whom it is not the most frequent culprit in their
inbox on any given day.
And our commitment to that, despite the fact
we are in very difficult financial times,
with the government withdrawing 44 and 1
half million pounds of funding from bucks,
this is something that we've been very clear
we wanted to make a priority.
We have protected that.
And that 120 million pound programme
will continue forwards as we look
to resurface more and more of the roads in Buckinghamshire.
Now, the way that we're doing that
is by taking a long -term rather than a short -term approach.
We don't just want to be sitting here
playing whack -a -mole with potholes for the next four years.
We want long -term investment,
and you will see from the profiling
of the money going into that programme
that we are leaning more and more into capital works
because as residents will see on the ground, those are the schemes where we
are resurfacing a road that make the most difference and improve the
quality of the network in the long term. So they are delivering both a better
outcome but also better value for money over the period of the
MTFP and well beyond that as well. Another one that people often write to
about where they are members of council, members of the public, is drains and gullies.
And obviously we are in the middle of winter now and we are seeing, you know, a lot of
water and indeed occasionally snow coming out of the sky.
We've had a commitment for a very long time to clear every drain and gully every year.
Now this is something that is not typical for local authorities.
I don't think any of our neighbouring local authorities do it in that way.
An awful lot of them have a divided programme between one year sort of urban and semi -urban
and three year rural.
But one of the things that we are going to be doing as we continue this programme is that
because we have had our new contractor in place for a few years and we've got much better
data collection, we think that actually there is good scope for improving the way that we
do that.
we can identify those drains that block up considerably more often than once a year.
And we can get those funds deployed into a programme that's actually going to hopefully
see more of those drains kept clear from the perspective of residents.
We've also got some other pots of money on the roads in terms of our failed roads programme,
which is looking at roads which struggle to attract funding
under sort of typical value for money exercises.
You're very often talking about very small,
low traffic rural roads,
but we think it is important to get those done as well.
Now, a couple of bits where you may have seen
some sort of adverse things in the numbers.
In terms of our push to roll out
EV charging infrastructure, we have had difficulties over the last year.
Difficulties, which I have to say have surprised me, in that we put together a programme to deliver
EV charging points across the county, in which we had a very healthy revenue share for the
council so that more of the revenue, once those were in place, was actually going to
coming back to the local authority
so that we can invest in doing things like expanding
that infrastructure or indeed finding more money
to go into the roads.
But unfortunately, when we put this to the government,
they seemed to think that we had,
I don't quite know how to deliver it.
In my brain, we delivered too successful a programme.
We were returning too much of a revenue share
to the local authority.
and they basically told us to go away and accept less money,
which frankly I think is just a ludicrous position to hold.
Unfortunately, that has delayed our programme,
and you will see that reflected in that we are therefore not
bringing in quite as much revenue as we want
to from those installations.
Obviously, we have been hit specifically in terms of moving
around with money by national government,
As I mentioned before, you're looking for the whole of the authority at 44 and a half
million pound cut in funding to Buckinghamshire.
But we have seen some specific issues in the transport portfolio.
The worst of which, I think, or perhaps the most stark of which has been the halving of
capital money for busses through the Bus Service Improvement Programme.
54 % cuts, which is going to make a serious material difference to what we're able to
do.
You know, I've been in front, I think, of a couple of members here before at the tech
committee talking very enthusiastically about the fantastic work that our team does on busses.
And it's really disappointing to see that level of funding falling away because, you
know, given that we don't receive a huge amount in the first place, we've done a huge amount
with it.
So there are some areas of challenge.
The overall picture is difficult, but they are,
there are areas in which I think we are going to be able
to deploy good amounts of funding to very good effect.
On the other side of the equation,
there are some long -term systemic problems,
obviously around home school transport.
This is an area where we have seen very consistent increase
in the volume of applications and we are having to deal with a constantly
increasing influx to the point where despite the fact that we've managed to
very significantly lower the unit cost of delivering that to make that as
efficient as we possibly can that is still having an adverse effect on that
on the portfolio budget overall and so you know we're saving millions and
millions of pounds in making that service better which is just being
overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the increase in volume.
And you will have seen that reflected in the PAC as well.
We're always very careful, because obviously this
is an area where we're being entrusted
with some very vulnerable people to make sure that we are always
taking a safety first approach.
And we have factored that into the way
that we have managed to achieve the efficiencies that we have.
So our procurement model now works on the basis of a hard gateway in terms of suitability
and safety so that any potential provider must prove to us in the first instance that
they meet the standards that we're setting in terms of looking after very vulnerable
young bucks residents in lost cases.
And once they have cleared that hurdle, we can then have a procurement process that's
based entirely on cost.
And that's really allowed us to make very significant progress
in bringing down the unit cost, while also making sure
that we're delivering a good service for our residents.
One of the elements you will have seen in the pack again
is that obviously because of the additional ECHPs that we are,
sorry, ECHPs, that we are going to be clearing overall
as an authority, there is a knock -on expenditure of that
which goes into that home to school transport area.
And as you will see, we've allocated a fairly significant
amount of additional funding to make sure
that we are keeping up with that.
So as those EHDPs are delivered, we are able
to provide the transport that goes alongside them.
You know, there's a certain proportion of those cases,
obviously, it's all looked at individually, but a proportion
of those cases will result in a need for some home school transport there as well.
So it's a tricky picture, but I think if you look at what we've managed to do over the
last few years in terms of the volume of programmes that we're delivering, particularly on, as
I say, that absolutely critical issue for residents being the quality and the state
of the roads, 200 capital programmes this financial year, I think we're heading up to, are we
heading up to 270 next year?
So, you know, we really are ramping this up.
We've built a very solid foundation.
The new contract arrangements we have with our primary contractors,
Balfour Beatty, have opened up a lot of opportunities for us to both do more
and to make sure that that contract management side of things is being
conducted more effectively.
And so, you know, we are managing to do more with less because that contract is
being managed very efficiently and obviously where we are finding savings, we can invest
those back into the network.
And just one of the things that quite often comes up when I'm talking to residents about
these things is the scale of the operation that we're running.
So we're looking at about 2 ,100 miles of carriageway.
I think if you take all of the carriageway, footway, cycleway, absolutely everything and
put it together, it's a little short of 10 ,000 kilometres.
So it's an absolutely enormous network.
You know, we're maintaining near enough 30 ,000 streetlights, 86 ,000 gullies, I think 40 ,000
odd signs.
So it's a very big and extensive network.
There's a lot that needs to go into the day -to -day maintenance, but our strategic focus is on
that long -term investment and bringing up the quality of the surfaces and making sure
that when residents are trying to get around in the county they can do so.
And they can do so without having to worry too much about potholes and drains that aren't
clearing and that kind of thing.
This is obviously an ongoing piece of work.
You know, this is very much, you know, lots done, but lots more to do.
And I think you'll see both our ambition and our plan to deliver that in the numbers, in
the PAC, as I say, moving more towards the profile, moving more towards capital expenditure,
which is a natural consequence of, you know, as we do more long -term strategic work, that
is going to reduce pressure in terms of short and medium term
maintenance.
And so you can sort of see that bearing fruit
through the numbers.
But there's probably an awful lot more I could talk about,
but I'd end up sitting here an hour later
and I'd still be talking about stuff in the brief.
So I'm going to bring it to a close there,
and I'm very happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much indeed.
Do any of the service directors have anything
Cllr John Chilver - 3:02:34
they want to add at this stage?
Deputy Cabinet Member, Head of Finance.
Right, we can move straight on to questions then.
Councillor Wilson.
Thank you, Chairman, and good afternoon.
Firstly, I think congratulations on the ratings
given by government yesterday on funding and practise,
which I think were both green,
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 3:02:56
which doesn't necessarily deal with all the legacy issues,
but I think the move that we've got
towards a preventative programme,
and obviously they rate our programming,
so I think that's good news.
I was delighted to see the late rental scheme
being put in the budget on page 160,
because as much as we can do all this capital programme,
then the utility companies come and dig it all up again.
And whether or not the assumptions that you've put
into the budget for the late rental scheme are modest because obviously I think that's
an area where like parking enforcement residents would love to see us out doing a lot more
and whether or not you actually think that there is upside to the budget should this
prove to be as successful as we hope it's going to be. So I've got other questions but
I'll go there. Yeah absolutely and we were delighted after it after a painfully extended
delay to finally have that approved.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:04:02
I think we have been relatively modest in the numbers we've put in here.
Part of the reason for that is because there is effectively a grace period built into that
once we have that approval.
There's a few internal governance structures we need to set up as well because there's
rules about where the money that's collected can go and what it can be spent on.
So we need to set that up effectively.
But I don't think that will be, there is potential scope to expand the number that's in there.
In a way I hope we don't because actually, you know, if this works absolutely as intended,
what we will see is utility companies just being much more efficient with their use of
road space.
And, you know, the reason why we push so hard for this is because under the, well, I suppose
now under the old system, there was just not enough of a financial incentive to
make utilities map things out in a way that was efficient in terms of both use
of road space and in terms of how many times they had to sort of breach the
surface and you're absolutely right you know we've all seen this and you've got
a perfectly good stretch of road. A utility company comes along and digs a
trench in it and frankly it doesn't matter how well they put it back
together, from that point on there is now a weakness in that surface which at some point
we're going to have to address.
So we may well be able to expand that income in future years, but as I say, I sort of hope
that we don't and that actually we effectively take that money in having to do less repairs
in the long term.
But it's a situation where we don't know exactly how it's going to shake out.
So we've approached it cautiously.
We're trying to drive good behaviour, but similarly I'd hope to be able to come back
in future years and say actually we've got a bit of extra cash from this and we'll invest
it over here.
Thank you.
I have questions on other topics, but I'm happy to let other committee members go and
then come back when they.
Thank you.
Councillor Tett.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 3:06:04
Yes, thank you.
I just add my congratulations on the lane rental scheme.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:06:09
I think it's a great introduction.
Cllr Martin Tett - 3:06:11
It's taken too long to get through.
Not your fault.
That's entirely to the government, but really looking forward to that coming in.
My questions, some of them are just basic questions I get asked by residents, so bear
with the naivety of them.
The gully cleaning programme, we've long promised that we'll clean every gully every year.
Can you just confirm that this will enable us to maintain that programme?
Yep.
Secondly, on bus subsidies, again, I get a lot of particularly elderly residents write
to me about bus subsidies.
I think it's 2 .4 million that's in here.
Can you just confirm that does not represent any reduction
in the network as a result of that?
And so, you know, whatever the money is,
just want to make sure that we don't have local services
reduced or cancelled as a result of any changes
in the bus subsidy.
And then my biggest strategic question,
which is on homeschool transport,
we spent quite a lot of time with the leader talking
about the pressure on the high needs block and the, you know, quite frankly it's
like the Titanic getting ripped below the water line in terms of the cost of that.
Less often talked about is the impact of exactly the same pressures on
homeschool transport and you've mentioned in here about the EHCPs etc.
Can you confirm the government has agreed that those additional costs will
taken in -house by the government as a result of the proposal they've made on the high needs
block?
And if not, what are the plans to manage that pressure going forward, given it's inextricably
linked to that high needs block, the HCP issue?
Absolutely.
So on the Drenz and Gully's point, yes, absolutely happy to give that commitment.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:08:02
I know that idea originally came from you, Councillor Tetz.
It's a good idea and we're going to keep it.
What I think we can do though,
is actually start to look at those drains and gullies
that we can potentially clear more than once a year.
Because we've got that data now
where we can identify the ones that are a real issue.
And so I think, yes, drains and gullies cleared,
plus a bit of intelligence led work on the extra ones.
In terms of busses, yes, the 2 .4 million is a continuation of the support that we've given previously.
The difficulty that we've got that I was talking about was in terms of the bus service improvement plan.
So that's going to hamper our ability to develop that network further.
And as I say, it's really disappointing because actually the work that's done by the team on this is really, really good.
we've had some real shocks to the system
in the last few years with certain companies
withdrawing from providing any service provision
pretty much overnight.
And working with companies to stand that service
back up again and then actually improve it
quite considerably in a lot of places
has been really, really good work
and it's really disappointing to see that
not being recognised and that capital funding cut.
but in terms of the subsidies that you're talking about,
yes, absolutely, that's a continuation.
Homeschool transport and high needs block
is always a difficult one in the sense
that it is the bit that sort of falls outside
what government is talking about.
So this is a cost that is borne by local authorities.
It's a statutory provision.
It's something that we have to do.
But there is not sort of an accompanying source of funding
that matches that and I think that is something that we'll be pushing quite
hard on when it comes to whenever we finally get this announcement of what
the government is thinking about doing I think it's been delayed three times now
and our latest promises that it will be sometime this year but I'm sceptical
frankly that that is going to include provision for home to school transport
based on on previous conduct and this is a pressure but you're absolutely right
state is entirely tied up with that provision sort of further up the line as
it were. We've got a lot of ongoing work in terms of trying to make that a better
value for money proposition and we know in the past you know we've had operators
in that sector who have been somewhat taking advantage. We've built a very
robust procurement process that lets us sort of phase as much of that out as
possible and we will continue to bear down on that.
And in terms of how we manage that, you'll see there is an amount of money, as I say,
that's been allocated to cover the additional volume that we're going to have to cover because
of the increased rates of processing EHCPs.
But it really is an ongoing process and we've got a board specifically set up doing across
portfolios with us and children's services looking at how we can best manage that, how
we can make sure that we are delivering a good service, but it is also providing value
for money to the taxpayer.
In fact, really, we need to go beyond that.
We really are into this does have to be as efficient as it possibly can be because the
volume prospect is so high that any efficiency we can make will be replicated out to the
where it eats quite a lot of money.
So I can't give any guarantees on that.
We are somewhat at the mercy of government policy, frankly.
But it's certainly something we'll be making
very strong representations about.
I think Dave Skinner, our head of finance,
wants to come in here.
Thank you, Chairman.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:12:03
Just to add that some slightly technical nuancing
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 3:12:05
of the announcement from central government
was that they didn't say DSG deficits
or DSG expenditure going forward.
They spoke about SEND expenditure.
So I think it does open the possibility
that they could at least consider the funding
of homeschool transport and its inextricable links
to SEND provision.
But I think that that's something for the whole sector
to lobby very hard on to try and ensure that can happen.
Just for the benefit of those watching, the EHCPs are Education, Health and Care Plans
Cllr John Chilver - 3:12:45
for children with special needs, otherwise known as SEND expenditure.
I think I've got Councillor Snave next.
Thank you.
I'm pleased to see that you feel confident with the money that you've got in the pot
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 3:13:05
for roads.
But I want to talk about yellow paint and pots of it, please.
We've spoken about this in the past.
There's a need for an awful lot of our roads to be re -marked because the yellow markings have disappeared.
There's also, I hope, funding in there to cover new yellow lines.
And you'll be glad you haven't got parking in here anymore,
but by doing these things you will make the life so much easier for our parking
teams and their ability to enforce. Can we have reassurances on lots of yellow
paint and lots of new corners with yellow double lines around them in the
next term? Thank you Councillor Sade. Yes, so there has been a bit of an issue
over the last, well I think in the last financial year, I'm not sure it's gone
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:13:59
back beyond that. And that a lot of local authorities are facing in terms of actually getting people out to do the work
and that that has been a bit of a challenge. We've brought on I think some new, are they contractors or subcontractors?
Subcontractors for this year so that we can get more of that work done because we absolutely appreciate that it needs doing.
I'm not going to cut across my colleague who I think has already appeared before you in terms of
committing to changing parking regulations
because that's a matter for him.
But in terms of lines and signs, as we tend to look at it,
yes, absolutely, we're looking to do more.
The funding is available here to do it.
And we think that in sort of shifting around
in some of our contract selection
that we should be able to really crack on with that.
Obviously, we'll have to wait
until it's not freezing or coming out in buckets from the sky but yes absolutely.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:15:10
Thank you. Councillor Pole I think was next. Thank you. Thank you Chairman. In the risk
Cllr Chris Poll - 3:15:14
and opportunities section, under opportunities, there's a section working with Active Travel
England to establish Bucks as a lead authority for the delivery of rural
active travel projects. I'm really keen on active travel for the rural
communities and if they can be put in place then several rural communities
come together they make the size of a smaller town. So I note in the budget
figures for this year, a 3 million figure, I think page 166, but reducing down and this
is under a funded scheme. So is this active travel England? Is it something that government
would fund or have taken funding options away from? I wonder if you could just explain that
Please.
So in terms of active travel schemes,
yes, we are very keen to progress.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:16:18
And again, we've got a really good team
who are working on delivering these.
And you can see some of our sort of wider strategic plans
in the LCWIP and the Buck's Greenway
and these kind of things.
In terms of the way that that funding tends to work,
basically what we're doing is we're sort of
constructing a scheme and then we're going out
and looking for the funding to come in.
So there will be a bit of a drop off through the years
because there will be schemes that are further out
and therefore we haven't got to the point
of securing the funding for them yet.
There are some difficulties with active travel.
A particular bugbear of mine is that in order to,
they basically have a rating of,
you know, I think it's one to four.
I'm looking at, yeah, it's one to four, isn't it?
And depending on which level you can achieve that,
that sort of sets out, you know,
how much funding you can have access to effectively.
But basically, in order to get into the higher levels,
you effectively have to implement some form of LTN.
So you have to be, you have to have schemes,
not only that are quite complex,
but they're also effectively taking road space away
from other road users.
And obviously anyone who's been driving around in any of our towns in Buggs knows that there
is simply not the room for that kind of thing.
I mean, I personally object to what I think is effectively a socialist idea being mandated
in order to receive funding.
I don't think that's an appropriate bar to set to stop that from happening.
But despite that, we still achieve a good rating.
We've got some fantastic schemes that are already deployed.
We've got some good schemes that are in the pipeline.
And it is just about securing.
Usually it's a combination of there's some
active travel England money.
There's quite often some section 106 money
from local developments.
And so it's sort of bringing that funding together
to get a project across the line.
As I say, I think given the quality of the schemes
that we've delivered so far,
I think we should have a higher rating
in terms of how active travelling looks at this.
I don't think we should be cut off
just because we're not willing to shut down
the middle of a town in order to tick a box
with the government.
But yeah, there's a lot of tension that goes in.
I will mention the somewhat legendary
within active travel communities,
Haddonham and Sir Tame Link,
that I think has been worked on for about 25 years,
which we are now making progress on and working very closely with
Oxford's share over the county boundary in order to help that to deliver that so, you know
The the scope of these projects is effectively whatever we think we can make work
Without causing other problems on the network and the team have been very good at bringing in the funding to do that
But you know as I say there is there is a limit on that
because of the slightly ideological nature
of the way the funding is allocated.
But would the timely adoption of CIL in the north
make any difference to the funding?
Cllr Chris Poll - 3:19:39
That might be a question more
from a planning perspective, I think.
Steve?
Yes, thank you.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:19:45
So I guess the answer to that is potentially.
Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability - 3:19:50
And so ultimately, once CIL is adopted in the north,
and as you'll have seen from the session earlier today,
there's an additional level of income received there are future decisions then for the council to make in terms of how it then
allocates its kind of capital receipts
Increased silver seats will just contribute to that but will be part of future decision -making
Thank You, Jim
Cllr John Chilver - 3:20:21
Cllr Andy Huxley - 3:20:24
Back in the 50s we used to have a by -law regarding verges and parking on verges.
If I'm right in saying that now this by -law is not enforceable, is there any plans to
try and put something in?
Because our verges, certainly in Aylesbury I can speak about our getting churned up something,
well they're getting in a ridiculous state.
We're having to put in one or two areas on my patch,
we're looking at putting in alternatives
to stop people parking on them.
So is there anything in the pipeline
that we can look forward to to say
that there is going to be some sort of enforcement
on grass virtues?
So I think part of this is going to be
a parking enforcement question
because I think that's how the enforcement would be done. I would be
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:21:22
very interested to see how that interacts with what the government is
proposing in terms of pavement parking and how far over that that carries.
So I think that's something we'd have to have a look at and see what the
implications of pavement parking changes would be for verge parking as
well. But that's certainly something I'm very happy to have a look at that and
and see if there's anything we can do.
I think in terms of enforcement of that though,
that would come through the parking service
rather than through transport.
Sorry, thank you.
When it came to the government
Cllr John Chilver - 3:22:02
Cllr Andy Huxley - 3:22:06
allowing us to build extra houses,
did we go back to them to get any extra funding
in respect to infrastructure?
Yeah, so I mean, this is a massive issue for us
in the long term.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:22:22
You know, the government has imposed a target
of 95 ,000 houses on Buckinghamshire.
It represents a 40 % rise
in what we were looking at previously.
If they are built out, it will represent
almost a 50 % increase in population in the county,
and that will obviously have an impact
on the road network. I know that the leader has been pushing hard on this and this is
something that I think all local authorities are impressing on government, which is that
if you're going to give us massively higher housing numbers, you're going to have to provide
some funding for infrastructure. Because the way that the planning system is set up at
the moment, it is just not set up in a way that you can recover the amount of funding
you would need to deal with changes on that scale.
I have not seen any indication that the government
is gonna step up to this challenge.
One of the first things that it did
when it came into power was abolish the,
I think it was called the National Infrastructure Levy,
which the previous government was putting in place
that would effectively collect money into a pot
from developers in order to achieve
this large -scale infrastructure.
I think you can see from some of the work that we're doing,
particularly around Alesbury, particularly around the relief
roads we have here, that there are opportunities to deliver
major infrastructure problems.
But we are reliant on partners like HS2 and others who are
not necessarily, A, particularly easy to get
funding out of, and B, hopefully are not going to be
around forever.
Although with HS2, I believe they're gone when they've actually gone.
So there is some stuff we can do, but it is not funded.
And we are not receiving the support that we need from government to
provide infrastructure to deal with that 95 ,000 housing number.
Obviously we're going through the process of drawing up the local plan at the moment
and there'll be a lot in there.
And there's also the local transport plan that we're drawing up alongside that.
And so there are a lot of mechanisms where we will consider that.
But the up and down answer is more support from government is needed.
There is no evidence that that support is going to come forward.
Thank you.
Councillor Crabtree.
Yes, thank you.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:25:03
Cllr Anna Crabtree - 3:25:06
I'm looking at the investments that are set out on page 168 and the commitment to invest
120 million pounds in the road infrastructure, which I know is very important to you.
I was trying to tie some of the numbers in the first paragraph back to the details on the table on page
165 and I can't tie up the plane and patch number which looks like it's lower on the table than it is in the breakdown
and the bullet points. I just wondered if there is a shortfall in this commitment
to deliver 120 million pounds where do you anticipate that that additional
funding might come from? Thank you. So what there is no shortfall if the wrong
number has gone into the pack then obviously I apologise for that we'll
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:25:46
we'll have a look at that but you know we've been we've been very careful about
making sure that we can deliver this level of expenditure we think it's
necessary. We know it's a priority for residents.
And so yeah, the commitment to that
120 million pound road programme is absolutely ironclad.
As I say if there is a number in a table, this is wrong. We will obviously correct that.
Thanks, I just want to cheque that Councillor Dali.
Hi, good afternoon.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:26:18
Cllr Christine Adali - 3:26:22
With such a large highways programme, so a 629 million capital spent planned, what are the
governance controls on slippage and cost escalation and which are the project most at risk of
delay or de -scoping?
Sorry, can I just clarify, did you say governance controls as opposed to government controls?
Yes.
Governance, yes.
Yes, absolutely.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:26:44
So the first thing to say is that generally speaking,
we are actually very good on this.
If you look at, I think last year,
I think our slippage rate was 2%.
So, and given the scale of the programme, that's very high.
There's quite a lot of the sort of internal processes
and procedures.
Members will have noticed things do get moved around
during the year, and I appreciate that
that can cause some frustration when we, you know,
local residents are expecting something to happen in May and it ends up happening in September.
The purpose of that though is
precisely what you're asking the question about. The purpose of that is to make sure that in any given year
we are actually getting that money out of the door and we are actually delivering those programmes.
So one of the one of the critical things that we do is we have sort of a number of schemes,
you know, big long list of schemes of stuff that we we know we're going to do. We've got it completely programmed,
and there's dates attached to it, it's all there,
all the way through to reserve schemes
that are basically ready to go but haven't been programmed
so that if we run into an issue with a particular scheme,
we've got a range of options in a range of costs
so that we can slot that in
and make sure the money's still,
the investment's still going out the door
and the roads are still being done.
It's very difficult to say what the most likely are.
I mean, obviously it shifts, you know,
the more complex a project,
the more likely you are to see slippage.
But unfortunately, given,
particularly given the somewhat hit and miss knowledge
that utility companies have of their own assets
sitting under the roadway,
it is not as uncommon as I would like it to be
for us to get to a project and suddenly find
that major utility diversion works need to take place,
for example, because Thames Water or whoever it is
doesn't know themselves that they've got a pipe
under that section of roads.
So I think something,
there is definitely a link with complexity,
but it's not a hard and fast link.
There are some very simple projects
that end up having to be moved
because of unexpected delays.
But as I say, we always make sure we've got that sort of,
that long tail of schemes so that when things
have to be delayed, there is something else
to go into their place and we are absolutely meticulous
about not letting schemes get lost.
So one thing that I'm very pleased that I never hear
from colleagues is this scheme was supposed to happen
and then it got pushed back and then it's never happened.
Sometimes things get delayed,
but they will always be followed through
and we will always make sure they're followed through
And I think colleagues should have received, I think,
this year's plan for capital works in their own wards
in the last week or so.
But you will also be receiving the forward plan out to the end
of the period over the four years.
So you will be able to see what we are planning to do in each
of your wards over that four years.
And obviously, that's an opportunity then to feed back
in on timescales and things like that.
So I think we've got good arrangements in place.
I think from that slippage number given the scale and the complexity of some of the projects,
I think that 2 % is good.
I'm not going to give a guarantee that we'll stay there, as I say, for the very simple reason that
there are unexpected complexities, particularly around utilities works.
But it's a big focus.
There's no point in us drawing up a big ambitious programme if we don't actually get the delivery done.
And that's why I always talk about it when I come to these meetings every year and then and also obviously tech
Keeps a close eye on us at transport and they can make sure that that we're delivering as well
Just to say tech is I think transport environment, climate change in communities, select committee.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:30:40
Councillor Dhillon.
Thank you chairman. Remember my question is on revenue budget which is page 158.
Cllr Dev Dhillon - 3:30:48
This is the subject which really went to very high
and now it's probably not that high,
which is transport infrastructure HS2.
I see the income goes 1 .5 million
and then expenses of 2 .2 billion.
Although the net budget is not that high,
but is there any provision
that we can actually make it any cost neutral?
Because any money, I'm sure you would know how to use it
or where to use it.
there's plenty of opportunities.
And again, if I come to the point
of what council actually said,
I remember many years ago,
I've been in council for nearly three decades.
On a wedge parking, we used to provide funding
for bollards or bird mouth.
So something that we can do a lot,
but this is something I think taxpayer always see,
something imposed on us, causing us a lot of hassle,
destroying over roads, bridges, all over the county,
and yet we have to contribute something.
Is there any way we can do something to that?
Yes, thank you, Councillor Dillon.
Yes, the issue is quite simply that HS2 Limited
do not cover all our costs on the project.
Cllr Peter Martin - 3:32:09
For example, engagement, where we believe we need to do
quite a lot of work talking to our residents and communities,
they will not cover engagement.
Their belief is that they do the work very thoroughly
themselves, and there isn't any role for the council.
The same is true of the marshals,
the work of our marshals that go out and look at our roads,
look at HGVs involved with the project that are off route,
going through country lanes, creating mayhem.
Those costs we have to bear, unfortunately.
We are negotiating at the moment with HS2 Limited
over costs and we are pressing to get a better deal
that they have steadfastly refused from day one
to cover engagement and the cost of marshals.
They flatly refuse and we have little leverage
apart from negotiation to try and improve that.
I'd just say Peter does a huge amount of work in this area making sure that HS2 are held
to account.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:33:14
Now often we don't have a mechanism to sort of extract what we should be able to extract
from them quite frankly and their starting position is always you get nothing.
But Peter has been fighting for a lot longer than I've been in this position to hold HS2
to account and you know if anybody in the in the county is experiencing a
problem with HST let us know because we really do take it up with them and you
know Councillor Tett will remember many many long meetings sitting in sitting in
and refusing to let them out until you know we've made sure that our residents
have had our say I've had their say and it's an ongoing issue there is some
uncertainty on the horizon because of the reset
that HS2's been talking about.
And we are yet to see quite what the results of that are.
But it's something that we'll continue to work on.
I think we have seen some improvement over the years.
It varies wildly depending on the subcontractor
because I think Align have got to the point
where actually they're engaging much better with residents.
and that is not the case with EKFB, frankly.
So there's more work to do there.
But there's a lot of effort that goes into this,
and I appreciate it can be a really frustrating issue
for members because you can push and push
and you can be absolutely right in everything you're saying.
And they'll sit behind their act of parliament
and say, no thank you, go away.
But it is, and I think until they're out of the county
will be a priority of this council to make sure that
HS2 is providing as much as we can get out of them
to ameliorate the damage that they've done to this county.
If I may just come back.
The project is obviously under massive cost pressures
Cllr Peter Martin - 3:35:13
from the Treasury and we are seeing now quite significant
changes in the project's engagement team.
So some of the better officers that they had
have left the project, and there are new recruits
who don't know the history, don't know our county,
don't know our roads, who are trying to make do.
And that's why I think the council's efforts
on engagement are so important.
We're covering for the inadequacies of the project,
which only seem to be getting worse at the moment.
The work isn't finished.
There's still a lot happening.
You just have to look at Calvin Wendover to see the impact of the project quite devastating and I think we have a
Unfortunately, we have a key role to play here and that's behind those figures and finally it's over 2 .2 million is only to provide
Marshals and
to community engagement
Cllr Dev Dhillon - 3:36:10
0.6 million from the project and we're pressing for more
Cllr Peter Martin - 3:36:20
Thank you. We have the Chairman of the Tech Select Committee with us.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:36:26
She's indicating that she'd like to come and address, I think, on this particular point.
So welcome. Could you please introduce yourself and then contribute?
Thank you very much, Chair.
Councillor Penny Drayton, good afternoon everyone.
I am Chair of the Tech Committee, T standing for Transport.
So thank you for allowing me along this afternoon.
I've got a question on the home to school transport.
You covered extensively in your introduction.
It's in the report and also Councillor Teth's obviously asked a question on it already.
Cllr Penny Drayton - 3:37:03
My point on it is again on the ECHPs and the huge increase we've seen over the last few
years.
The ECHP assessment rate of the council is a shocking low of 7 % at the moment, which gets done within the 20 -week statutory deadline.
Council's ambition is to turn this up to, take this up to 38 .2 % of applications, but the hit on result is obviously going to see a lot more demand for services.
So in the budget there's obviously the expected increase and then you have got
the money allocated as well for deficit. But what I'm trying to understand is
how is the expected increase being based? Is it on the 7 % as we
standardly are at the moment or is it based on the closer to 40 % and then the
million that's been allocated, is that to get you up to the 40 % at which point
would the main budget then be there because you've obviously got the same
amount allocated for the next three years. So the question is directly to
just understanding which figures have been used to reach that final budget
figure. Yeah I'll have a stab at this Richard will jump in if I'm getting
anything wrong as he usually does but effectively you've got two separate
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:38:24
measures.
So you've got an estimate of what is effectively an estimate of volume increase, which is,
you know, how much do we expect this to grow overall in terms of the number of people coming
through.
And then you've got an entirely separate calculation, which is, you know, our ambition effectively
is to get through the backlog of EHCPs and to clear that.
And we know from the numbers that we process at the moment,
roughly what proportion of EHDPs attract a home school element.
And so effectively we're looking at that total number in the backlog and
applying the percentage that we see at the moment.
And that's how we're getting the number for
the 8 million that we're putting in additional.
That 8 million is to deal with the increase coming in through that clearing of the backlog.
Separate to that, there is a calculation for what we think is the year -on -year increase
generally in terms of EACPs coming through.
Now that is an area that has been tricky to forecast.
And that's been true for a number of years just because, you know, frankly, the level
at which that volume is escalating just creeps up and up and up and up.
And so every now and again we do have to do an adjustment to our figures and then basically
go, okay, well we thought it was going to be, you know, X percent is actually X plus
1 percent, X plus 2 percent.
And that's something that I think that's an area that potentially gets revised as we come
back year after year in the MTFP programme.
Obviously this is the first time for a while that we've had a multiyear settlement and
And so there probably is a little bit more risk in terms of that forward projection because
we're trying to project that increase over three years.
But yeah, two distinct blocks, $8 million additional investment for the homeschool transport
that will be generated by clearing the backlog of EHCPs and then additional investment in
the baseline, which is to account for the year -on -year increase in volume, if that makes
sense.
It does make sense, thank you.
It doesn't really answer the question, though.
Cllr Penny Drayton - 3:40:45
So you're saying the 8 million is for the 30 percent difference
that we currently have between 7 percent turnaround
and 38 point turnaround at all?
So it's the total.
There are a number of EHCPs in the backlog.
So there are a number that are not,
have not currently been processed that we want to process.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:41:01
We have taken that total number.
So it's the total number of applications that haven't come through.
That's the number that we're using to determine that 8 million in terms of the pickup in volume for that.
So we're not trying to do anything complicated or apply a formula to it.
We've literally gone, this is how many are going to come through.
Is it about 32 % that end up with home school transport requirements?
And so we're just assuming that at least 32 % of those will require homeschool
transport provision and that's where we get the 8 million from.
And then as I say, there is year on year inflation in terms of the volume that
are coming through anyway and that's also taken into account.
But the 8 million is just taking all of the backlog saying, right,
if we can get all of this done, how much is that gonna generate in terms of
demand on homeschool transport and that's what the 8 million is covering.
Thank you so we're expecting 8 million each year for the next three years to
Cllr Penny Drayton - 3:42:11
cover backlog and then the main figure is based on us sticking at 7 % on a
normal turnaround. So the 8 million basically covers all of those
additional all of that additional demand coming into the system that's not a
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:42:23
one -off payment that's an 8 million increase in the homeschool transport
budget so that that will be present every year. Thank you very much I think
we can move on to second questions for members now. Councillor Wilson first.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:42:37
Thank you chair. Firstly I just want to add my endorsement to Councillor Huxley's
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 3:42:45
points about the vergers and the bylaws not just because it's a parking
enforcement issue and that being in Councillor Boles's portfolio. But the knock -on consequences
it has on footways and drains, which we see because mud drawn off highways blocks drains
and then that gives you other issues. But also the grass cutting regime and you know
in a note in here there's a reduction in that but we've talked about devolved services.
So I'm pleased if you were to take it away on a cross portfolio basis and look
at it because I think its consequences to our infrastructure are far bigger
than just WLL lines or parking tickets so I think it has a big impact
back into the transport and the highways area. My question is on page 162 and this
relates back to homeschool transport.
And I note there's a couple of points on here
that I wanted to pick up.
So under growth, we've allocated 185 ,000 pounds per annum
to a cost neutral team to deliver additional savings.
If I look down the bottom on the savings,
they're delivering 260 ,000 pounds per annum.
That feels like a fairly modest return for the additional resource to try and deliver
that given the scale of the challenge that we have.
So part A of the question is, is that a useful use of resource?
Part B is in the part B is if you look at the inflation area, so not the growth, so
the number, not the number of EHDPs,
but the inflation presumably cost per pupil or per student,
is rising to 4 .6 million over this year's,
last year's, this year's budget.
And given that we've undergone
an extensive procurement exercise,
as you say, we've tightened up the criteria.
At what point on a invest to save basis
does market intervention become economically viable
because we have a procurement policy now
that is trying to control the supply base and to stop,
how do I put this, a dysfunctional market.
We're still seeing a vast amount of inflation coming through
and our team that we've allocated to delivering the savings
and I'm aware also of the walk to school
and the road improvements and other bits and pieces,
But it's relatively modest in the round of things.
So at what point do we need to make a big bet like children's homes, like temporary
accommodation where this market is now, as we know, out of control?
And how do we intervene in the market?
Because we've pulled a lot of levers.
We are pulling a lot of levers.
But it just keeps growing like Topsy.
Yeah, no, it's a perfectly fair question.
Apologies, I'm looking to Richard here because as is so often the case with these meetings
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:46:07
so helpfully our page numbers on my pack are slightly different to the page numbers on
yours.
We're using what we call the portrait page numbering system as opposed to the landscape
numbering system.
Exactly, so I apologise for having to turn to my colleague on that one.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 3:46:20
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:46:24
So you've raised a few points there I'll try and go through in turn.
So the cost pressure increase in home to school transport
is almost entirely volume rather than unit cost.
We're actually generally speaking managing
to bring unit cost down in lost cases.
Now obviously there may well be a flaw to that
and that's a perfectly valid point to raise.
But I think there probably is a little way to go.
There are more savings we can realise.
It's also worth pointing out that in terms of the return
on Invest to Save, there are savings that have already been baked into previous budgets
on this that won't appear here where we're looking at changes.
And so the success of that team in bringing down unit costs to cope with volume, I think
is probably totally underestimated in these numbers.
frankly that work is the reason why I think we're a million out.
We're a million out rather than about five.
So the savings that they're delivering, the efficiencies that they're making are very substantial.
And I suppose that's something I think we've probably got a better breakdown of that that we could provide.
So you can see the totality of what that's achieving because I have nothing but praise for this team of people.
The work that they're doing is is you know incredibly difficult incredibly sensitive and they are both
They are delivering a lower unit cost and a better service frankly
the wider point on you know, when you take a
Large -scale intervention effectively sort of seek to bring it in -house
That is always going to be exceptionally difficult in this area for the very simple reason that you are
Providing transport across effectively an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon
and you can't hire people just for an hour in the morning,
an hour in the afternoon, nor can you sort of spread
the transport across the day.
So setting aside any issues you'd have with, you know,
the capital you need to expend to build the fleet,
that you've also got the issue of,
there is a lot of variability year on year
because you've got people coming into the system,
going out of the system.
And one of the ways that we've managed to bring down
the unit cost is by being very, very efficient in terms of the routes that we're taking.
So when people are allocated in the EACP, the transport component will talk about how
many people they can travel with.
And obviously the most expensive stuff is the people where that assessment is one.
They have to be on their own.
And then they effectively have to be in a taxi.
But there is a range that goes up to people in minibusses and things like that.
So what we've, but it is much, much cheaper to procure, you know, a 16 -person minibus
than it is to procure a three -person vehicle like a taxi.
And one of the ways that we've managed to bring that cost down is by making sure that,
you know, if someone can be on a 16 -person minibus, they are on one and they're not in
a taxi instead.
So you'd have I think considerable difficulty in your capital procurement
to the vehicles you'd need to operate it and making sure that stayed efficient.
But as I said, I think the biggest challenge is just that it's a morning and
evening service, it's at fixed times and
the additional cost of staff to man something like that.
So it's never something that I'm not gonna rule this in or out on ideological
grounds although I'm probably more inclined to find a market solution it's
fair to say but in the circumstance of this you just don't get the same return
as you do with the children's homes you know they're they're a very different
prospect because you can you can effectively you know you've got a flow
of people you can get into them and make sure they're being used in a way that
you can't necessarily with with trying to bring home to school in -house but
But it's a very fair question because we are in this landscape at the moment of these services
which are sort of getting out of control in terms of cost and in lost areas where having
to look at doing things that we haven't considered probably for 10 or 20 years.
So homeschool transport is such a pressure that no option is ever off the table, but
I don't think we're there at the moment.
I intentionally use the word market intervention rather than in -house.
So I understand the limitations on that.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 3:50:53
But whether or not there has to be a more strategic look
into the market and whether there's regional solution
or whatever.
My questions were driven by the numbers really is
that increase in demand is driving 13 million
and inflationary increases are driving 4 .6 million.
So it's not insignificant as a proportion of the whole.
And whilst there are some mitigating savings,
they are to reduce demand and some efficiencies.
So my concern is around inflation,
given that we have an effective procurement model,
and also that we have a team who are focused on programme savings,
but they're costing us 200 to get 250.
And that doesn't seem to be a very good return on investment,
given the overall scale of the challenge
of a 30, 40 million pound budget.
Yeah, as I said, I think we've already locked in some of the savings that we're going to
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:51:50
get from that team in previous budgets.
But I'm sure we can provide a breakdown of that to come back to the committee.
So we can have some upside to this budget, I guess is what you're saying.
There is more upside than it appears in this presentation.
That's what we like to hear, cabinet member, that we can bank some additional savings.
Not sure that's what he's saying.
No, I know it.
I think you said he's had the cost,
but the benefits have yet to fully flow through.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 3:52:15
Well, I think what I'm saying is that actually,
benefits have been realised in a lot of places,
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:52:24
but they're not necessarily here in this document
because they've appeared in previous MTFPs.
But I don't know, Richard, is there
anything you want to add on that?
I mean, very little to add, I think, Tom.
I mean, it's certainly the case that this
has been an area of huge interest for this committee
in previous budget scrutiny processes.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 3:52:43
It's a massive area of spend, a huge area of cost pressure
for us as a council with this responsibility.
And of course, that's the case countrywide.
CCN have done extensive research on this for exactly that reason
as an example.
I feel really confident that we've
got a very, very comprehensive and credible programme in place,
which the cabinet member alluded to earlier
in terms of driving down cost and providing a really good experience for pupils on passenger
transport.
We've got a myriad of savings arrangements in place from promoting personal transport
budgets, driving down costs in terms of the new procurement arrangements we've got in
place, which you mentioned earlier for operators, being really robust around eligibility, providing
a range of different transport options, including actually public transport as a solution as
So we have about 800 of our home to school transport children
travelling to school on the public bus.
And that's always the cheapest.
And I would also argue, in some ways,
the best way to discharge that responsibility
in terms of promoting independence for those young
people as well.
So it's a big area of investment,
a big area of attention for us operationally and politically.
I think market intervention, certainly
in terms of in -house provision, is a big challenge
for the reason the cabinet members alluded to already.
We've looked very carefully at that.
There isn't a credible business case for in -house provision.
And I would also argue in terms of the arrangements
we've got with our new dynamic purchasing system,
that is a very robust intervention, actually,
in terms of the market.
We have over 70 providers as part of our DPS arrangements
now.
And the rules, again, are very clear.
Once you pass the safeguarding thresholds,
then it is a price only decision.
and now we're seeing that driving down unit costs as well.
Great, thanks.
I think Dave, you wanted to comment on this?
Yeah, just to add a couple of points, I guess.
Cllr John Chilver - 3:54:46
So what is the point about structural intervention
and how that plays through, then obviously we need to wait
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 3:54:50
and see what the government reform on SEND provisions
is going to be in terms of financial and operational
impacts in order to be able to really then think
through anything else.
Just on the inflation point, obviously one of the points
I think the leader made this morning was the change in fuel duty as well kind of going
through.
So that obviously flows through in terms of going through all these figures.
Yeah, the fuel duty is separately split out on the slide.
It goes up to $224 ,000, but the inflation increase is $4 .6 million.
I'm just responding to that inflation increase number.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 3:55:25
Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
I mean, look, it is something we have to deal with.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:55:35
and there is an element of uncertainty there because we have an economic situation or landscape
in this country at the moment that feels very much like it could get worse very quickly.
We've got large parts of the budget being rolled back within weeks of it coming out.
From everything that I can see, the amount of revenue that the government thought it
was going to be able to bring in this year,
it's not going to be able to, even though it's
put swinging tax increases on all sorts of things.
I suspect they'll have to come back next year.
And I think a lot of these things,
particularly if you mix in some more slightly ridiculous pay
settlements with unions, you will
create an environment where inflation
starts to tick up again.
I think that's absolutely right.
But as you've pointed out, we've got a fairly robust figure
built in and you know we are we are cautious when it comes to elements like
that but absolutely completely take your point on it and it is something we will
keep an eye on. Thank you before we continue with the committee questions
Cllr John Chilver - 3:56:47
I'd like to invite another non committee member Councillor Schafer who's been
sitting patiently in the corner there for a long time but she did advise that
she wished to ask a question at this committee so I would like to give her
the opportunity to do so now. Welcome. Thank you Chairman and thank you for giving me the
opportunity. I would like to ask a question on footways please. It is probably actually
Cllr Anja Schaefer - 3:57:14
one of the biggest elements in my inbox and it's mostly from older people or people with
mobility issues that are very concerned about their ability
to get around even within a town.
We're not even talking village to town transport.
I notice that we've got a $10 million budget over four years
in there for footway structural repairs.
I also noticed that in the headlines
right at the beginning of the, we've had 17 completed footway schemes and I would
like to know over what period that was. It's a huge difference whether it was
over the, you know, the last four years or just in the last year. And so that's
part A of my question. Part B is in addition to the capital programme is an
element of the revenue programme, of the revenue budget dedicated to repairing
footways and given that 13 % roughly of the capital programme that's part C of the
question is now dedicated to footways can we expect a higher number of
completed footway schemes in the next four years because clearly 17 spread
across the entire county is not something that most residents will ever
Thank you, and this is absolutely a priority area for us, and that capital number you were
Cllr Thomas Broom - 3:58:51
talking about is actually a 25 % increase in capital investment into our foot ways, because
we do want to do more.
The profiling is quite interesting, because actually what we've done working with the
capital team is to try and...
We've basically found the most difficult, most complicated stuff, and we're doing it
first.
So I think what you'll probably see over the years is a slight uptick in terms of the number of projects that are done every year because we're doing the stuff that requires full reconstruction, dig it up to the foundations and relay the whole thing.
So that's where the capital funding is going. I'm not sure off the top of my head how many we've got planned for this year.
Thanks, Thomas. So just to reiterate, so in the current MTFP we have 8 .4 million. In this
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 3:59:43
proposed MTFP, 10 .8, so about a 25, slightly higher than that actually, 25 % increase. We're
delivering about 23 footway schemes this financial year. So you could reasonably assume an increase
on that kind of proportionate basis,
because it depends on the nature of the scheme,
the length of the footway, the type of works
that we'd need to deliver, but we'd feel confident
to say that we can deliver an increase proportionate
to the budgetary increase being proposed.
Yeah, and just to add on to that as well,
that's obviously only one element,
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:00:21
because there will be an element of the revenue budget,
which is going on maintenance and repair.
and often when you're looking at foot ways,
you know, a particular section will be a problem.
I've got a few of these in my own ward,
where actually you don't need to reconstruct
the whole foot way, you can actually just go in
and do a section and that effectively fixes the problem.
But I hope the increased funding we're putting into this
shows that we are taking it seriously.
I mean, I think proportionately,
I mean, we've gone from 100 to 120 million
on the roads programme, which is about,
obviously about a 20 % increase.
We're looking at slightly over a 25 % increase on the footway side of things. Although obviously it's coming from a lower base
But it's absolutely something that we take seriously
and as you say there are vulnerable residents who rely on the footways and
And not on the roadways and so we can't just put everything into the roads
But I think we've got we've got a serious amount committed to make sure that we can improve the footways as well as the roads
And as I say, there is a mix in there between those capital schemes for
reconstruction effectively of big long sections.
But also there is revenue funding that will go into reactive works which will
take foot ways.
And I totally acknowledge, may be impassable because of a defect at
a particular point.
But you can use that funding as well.
So you're sort of leveraging in from both sides for this.
But it's something that we do take very seriously, that we've committed additional funding to,
and we'll push forward and make sure it's delivered.
And it's sort of, you know, coming back to Councillor O 'Dahle's question from before,
a lot of it's about making sure that we're getting that out the door and that we're getting
those schemes delivered and we're not sort of seeing the slippage tick up.
But very much something we're committed to.
Thank you for that.
Cllr Anja Schaefer - 4:02:21
and do you have an answer on the part of the revenue budget that is dedicated to footpaths
or is there no such, I don't want to call it ring fence, but is there no such dedicated
part of the revenue budget?
I don't think it's separated out because it's just maintenance.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:02:41
So that is about identifying a defect and fixing that defect.
And so generally speaking the difference between the revenue work and the capital work is the revenue work is there is a problem
It's you know might be a pothole or a manhole cover. There's this
Coming loose or whatever it is. We will go and fix that specific problem versus capital
Which is you know this entire road or pavement needs to be renewed and so we'll go in and redo the whole thing
And so I so we don't
Unless Richard's going to correct me, I don't think we split that out on the revenue side because it's a case of
there's an intervention level and any defect that reaches that intervention level we will go and fix.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:03:28
Thank you very much, Councillor. Now Councillor Robin Strutsky has also been sitting patiently all day in fact, so I'd like to invite him to...
I apologise patiently and we probably don't go in the same word, but
Cllr Robin Stuchbury - 4:03:39
Well firstly, thank you chair for that question. Looking at your finances which have been created over 14 years of austerity and ideological decision making, I wonder whether you could look forward.
We're going to have to use other people's money to do what we need to do. That's the fiscal situation.
It has been said in this authority that 65 % of all growth is likely to come to North Buckinghamshire.
It also said in this authority that still is going to be introduced in North Buckinghamshire,
which means 65 % of the revenue or money coming from development will be in North Buckinghamshire.
It also is true that in North Buckinghamshire, large sections of the community have local
neighbourhood plans. So 25 % of possible uptake will go to local people. And you also have local
members in North Buckinghamshire. How are you going to stitch together a proper rational way
of working to ensure that every pound that comes in addresses the need where the development is
delivered against the needs of the community.
Historically, the county council used to use local members
to identify areas which could be covered
through development, through meetings.
This doesn't happen so much now.
You just get told that it's going to be done
at the delegated powers,
and it's been taking the decision under delegated powers.
So local members get cut out.
So how are we going to do that?
Because without doing that, we will be searching around for money to do schemes which could
be delivered through the 278s agreements and the section 68 agreements in development through
CIL and through section 106, which is money that your portfolio won't have to find, which
means the money can be stretched to other areas where there is not development to be
able to do an uplift.
I hope that's a very long question, but it's a big issue.
And, you know, forget the numbers of houses,
we may get money out of that.
Thank you.
Yeah, so I think a large part of the answer is that we work
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:06:01
through our colleagues on the planning side of things.
Because obviously, you know, the operation of cell doesn't sit
with us in transport.
I absolutely understand the point you're making there
because a lot of that, you know,
potentially is gonna need to go on transport infrastructure.
I'd say we do have members meetings.
I mean, we had one just before Christmas for Buckingham,
for your own ward, where we got everybody in
to review all the available and ongoing options
to talk about what local members wanted us to prioritise.
So I think we do still do that.
I'm slightly struggling to answer in terms of the SIL point because it's a planning matter,
it's not a transport matter.
Obviously we'll act as the delivery body effectively for anything that gets agreed on that side
of things.
Steve, do you want to comment on this?
If I may, thank you.
So just to perhaps some wider context in relation to SIL and infrastructure more generally.
Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability - 4:07:05
So as you've already heard today,
the council's obviously working on the new local plan
for Buckinghamshire.
That will be accompanied by an infrastructure delivery plan.
So there'll be an assessment done
as part of that local plan work around infrastructure needs,
infrastructure provision, and any particular gaps.
That will also help inform the council
through its capital programme.
So not just, again, in answer to an earlier question,
it won't just be necessarily still contributions,
but the council through its wider capital programme will need to then make decisions about where it applies its capital programme alongside any
funding that might be received from developers or government funding etc.
So those are all decisions that will be need to be taken as part of a kind of an infrastructure delivery plan
that will come forward as part of the local plan work.
Thank you for the attempt to answer both the questions. The meeting was about
Cllr Robin Stuchbury - 4:08:06
local member schemes was not about developments. It wasn't covering that. So that part hasn't been
answered and waiting two years on developments which are coming through on a daily basis in
North Buckinghamshire and large quantities of them that we've got to wait for two years to decide to
have local members knowledge and input in them. We did do it once in Buckingham, works perfectly well.
We got a roundabout delivered before the development because there was that continuity
to develop. That doesn't happen. I think that's costing the authority money because if you
don't use your local members, no matter what their party political affiliation is, you
don't use their knowledge. That's costing the accounts payers money. I think, would
you please go away and look at this because it's not our money. Remember, it's not our
money. No money that we have today is our money. It's public money and we're not managing
it properly if we don't do that. It's not our money. Let's remember that.
I couldn't agree more on that point. It is taxpayers' money. I have to say the meeting
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:09:08
that I'm talking about wasn't our own capital programme. It was schemes that are funded through
largely Section 106 contributions. And we did have engagement across all three members,
but only one member turned up to that meeting out of the three, who was my cabinet colleague
and you know we will provide these opportunities but it does require that
you know members need to turn up when we offer the opportunity to jump in as well
but you know something I absolutely take the point on and anyone who's got one of
our projects in their wards a lot of time will have sat in a meeting with me
because I'm very happy to you know go through the details of these schemes
whether we're talking about capital stuff on the roads or whether we're
talking about active travel projects or whatever it is you know any any member
who's got concerns about something that's happening in their wards, you know, do get in touch. Always have to sit down and have a chat.
I'll go back and cheque whether that meeting took place and come back to you if it's wrong. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Robin. So we go back to
Cllr Robin Stuchbury - 4:10:08
committee questions. I think Councillor Dali
Cllr John Chilver - 4:10:12
My question's actually been answered.
Cllr Christine Adali - 4:10:21
I think what Robin tried to get to and an easy solution for that problem would be if
parish councils would be allowed in section 106 meetings that affect their parish or their
town because they have the local knowledge of what they need infrastructure wise and
if they would be involved in the section 106 meetings that might nip that in the bud and
solve that problem.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:10:49
I mean Steve may well correct me on this but my instinct would be that a section 106 is a legal agreement between the planning authority and the developer and so you would struggle to allow outside bodies to go to a meeting like that I would assume? I'm getting a nod.
Yes, and I think again, you know, without, we're in danger of kind of getting into a
Steve Bambrick - Corporate Director for Planning, Growth & Sustainability - 4:11:07
planning discussion, I guess, but having an up -to -date local plan is a really important
part of understanding what the development needs are of a particular area, what the infrastructure
needs might be, and will guide any section 106 negotiations, which ultimately is a legal
agreement between the planning authority and the developer, so it can only occur.
I think we can pick up on this when we come to discuss the planning portfolio
later on.
Councillor Tett?
Cllr John Chilver - 4:11:33
Yes, thank you, Chairman.
I've got an infrastructure question, but I'll hold that for planning because I think it's the right place to answer that question.
Cllr Martin Tett - 4:11:40
On the revenue budget,
and I know we've touched on this already, but I still feel uncomfortable with this two million pound cut in the revenue budget.
I've had lots of dialogues with local area technicians over the years where, particularly halfway through the year,
They say, oh, my budget's been cut.
And this is the budget, by and large,
that does things like jet patching, repairs, potholes,
clean signs, payers' verges, all that sort of stuff.
And I get the theory that says if you put more into capital,
you can cut revenue.
Every time we've looked at that, historically,
it's never quite worked out.
You do more capital, but actually all the demand
on revenue is still there.
And I'm just, I'll be honest, I'm uncomfortable
to balance the books that we've taken two million out of revenue because I
think the demand for things like pothole filling, jet patching, sign cleaning, I
mean the signs are in terrible condition across some of the county. You know we've
got local groups putting themselves on social media cleaning our
road signs for us. You know and I just like some reassurance that actually
this is not going to impact on the ability to do the basics which is what
most of our residents ask us to do.
They don't really care, quite frankly,
that we spend 76 % of our money on social care.
I mean, they actually want the basics done.
And I'm just worried to balance the books
that we're taking two million out of the basics.
Please reassure me.
Yes, well, I mean, I suppose the basic reassurance
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:13:14
is that over the period, you're not seeing
a fall in the revenue budget.
So the overall revenue budget is net, 2526 is 76 million and it's 99 by 2829.
So where you're seeing a reduction in a particular line, that's usually because we're finding
ways to better deploy the funding.
So I think we were considering a slightly bigger reduction on the basis that through
improve contract management
We're actually seeing more service delivered for less money
But we've taken an active decision where we were considering this at cabinet level to basically just reinvest that
Into the service so that we can we can do more. So just just I saw revenue savings of 1 .4 1 .7
Cllr Martin Tett - 4:14:08
2 .1 and the papers you're saying those that those savings will not occur then no
I'm saying that those savings will occur, but that doesn't mean that the overall revenue
budget is going down.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:14:17
So those are efficiency savings that we think we can make within the revenue budget, but
the overall revenue budget is going up.
Yeah, I'd just like some clarification on that.
I'm sorry to prolong the debate.
I just think it's so fundamental to what our residents experience in terms of day -to -day
Cllr Martin Tett - 4:14:29
basics from this council.
And that's what they judge us on?
No, no, I...
So just real clarity on will the local areas still get the money they need to clean signs,
repair potholes, jet patch, et cetera, or will they simply turn around halfway through
the year and say, I'm sorry, that money's gone?
So they'll continue to get the funding.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:14:56
Whether or not sort of particular funding pots run out is more dependent on conditions.
I mean, if we have a particularly bad winter, obviously, the money we set aside, for example,
for jet patching can get eaten up much more quickly.
But we're not sort of cutting out of the budget.
We're making efficiencies within the revenue budgets.
And as I say, I think probably the primary part of those
is that we've got these new contracts in place, which
has just delivered improvements in a lot of ways.
And one of those improvements is generating revenue savings,
because we're either picking up new ways of working that
are allowing us to deliver the same thing for a lower cost.
Or in some cases, we're collecting data
that we weren't collecting under the old contract arrangement
and that means that we can better target, for example.
So we're not sending crews out to a piece of work
that doesn't need to happen.
We're also looking at how we improve things
like the balance on what's going into emergency five -day, 28 -day
repairs to see if we can better group things up. So we sort of cut back on that
thing that sometimes residents see where you know a crew will turn up and deal
with one pothole on a road and then they'll turn up a week later and deal
with another pothole on the same road. And obviously if we can if we can close
gaps like that that also provides us with a saving on the revenue side
because we're spending a little bit less money usually just on the traffic
management to be honest but but the saving is there. But no there is not a
reduction in terms of the funding we're providing for those services.
And in fact, we will continue to look for ways to improve that and do more with less
wherever we can.
Can I just follow up with a question on the savings numbers on page 160, which I think
Cllr John Chilver - 4:16:50
is the same page as the efficiency savings.
It's a small amount, but it says reduced number of 28 days repairs.
Is that because we're changing the time scale for repairs or accelerating the repairs?
How's that going to be delivered?
Richard, do you want to jump in on that?
Yeah, thanks Thomas, thank you Chairman.
So the cabinet member mentioned earlier in the opening remarks just around leaning more into the capital programme
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 4:17:15
and this line points to that.
So the capital programme that we've proposed as part of this budget for highways is about a 17 % increase on the current programme.
So the current four year programme, 168 million.
This capital programme, 197.
So about a 17 % increase in capital funding for highways.
And part of that will help to unlock revenue savings.
And this is a good example of that, thanks.
Yeah.
It's something I pointed out.
I think I mentioned this cabinet,
either the one just after or just before Christmas.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:17:50
But what we would hope to see
is a falling number of pothole repairs long term.
You know, if we can improve the state of the network and keep our intervention criteria
the same, what that should result in is fewer reports and then fewer potholes that have
to be filled because more of the network's in a better state.
Thank you.
I think Councillor Huxley, you're next.
Thank you, Chairman.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:18:19
Cllr Andy Huxley - 4:18:23
It's really in support of, although I can turn it into a question, in support of Councillor
Jafers concerns about footways.
I agree that we probably should be building more,
or putting more repairs in and what have you.
My concern is partly to do with where we are,
and I'm council for Bedgrove.
Sunbright Spark, back probably 30 years ago,
decided to build 20 foot, 30 foot trees alongside the footway. They've also grown 20, 30 foot
sideways as well under the footway and we have a lot of issues there. Now short of killing
off the trees and rebuilding the footways, I mean what would our policy be in that situation?
Because we've got footways which need repair. We're having a lot of accidents. We have a
lot of old people on the on that growth and it's getting to a stage where people
are getting injured on a daily basis yeah I mean this is one of the perennial
problems that you encounter in the in the brief in that everybody wants trees
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:19:35
by the highway but nobody wants the effects of trees by the highway and it's
it is it is somewhat insoluble I think probably if we had if we had us it's
It's difficult to answer without knowing the specifics,
but if we had a footpath that was just being fundamentally
undermined by the trees, I think we'd probably have to have
a conversation, I suspect we'd probably have a conversation
internally and then with local members about how they wanted
to proceed, because what we can't do is commit to
an unlimited funding pot to maintain a particular footpath
or road that's being impacted by a tree at some point,
as much as I hate to do it, we would have to look at whether or not that tree remains
there and what we do.
And there are certain things we can do because a lot of the time it's not just this tree
has been planted, it's that the wrong kind of tree has been planted.
And actually if you replant something else with a different root profile, it won't have
anywhere near the same impact.
But maybe this is one, if we take this up, I'm very happy to look at that specific schema
and see if there's...
I'll come and have a look. Great thank you very much.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:20:53
Councillor Crabtree. Yes thank you. I'm looking at the staffing impacts of some
Cllr Anna Crabtree - 4:20:57
of these highway service efficiencies that we're seeing on this page we're
just looking at page 160 and wondering given that service reviews are a part of
the council savings plan are there senior managers regularly monitoring the
impact of the service reviews on staff particularly for example in this area
local area technicians who I understand may be taking on bigger and bigger service areas
and the increased pressure that's put on their teams as a result of staff reductions.
And do you think there's enough being done to support staff through these challenging
times and whether there is any budget to do any more?
Yeah, so I mean an awful lot of the people who work on our roads and footways and everything
are outside the organisation.
Cllr Thomas Broom - 4:21:38
The vast majority are people employed by the contractors.
But obviously we have the teams in house who are doing sort of the command and control
element.
As you've alluded to, we do have a service review that's going through at the moment.
I think we talked to local members about it in September or October last year.
And we are pretty confident that that's going to deliver a better service both for members
and also for residents.
In terms of supporting staff through that process, that's something that we would always
do.
It is not a low pressure part of council delivery, let's put it that way.
You know, whether you're talking about getting that capital programme delivered or delivering
those savings in home to school transport, we've got a lot of people here who are working
very, very hard and we will absolutely support them however we can.
But I'm not going to say to you that, you know, it's a nice easy brief.
It's there's a lot of challenge.
As I've said already, you know, we've got the wider challenge
across the organisation of, you know, 44 and a half million quid
coming out of budget lines.
That does make things more difficult.
That does mean you have to do more with less.
Generally speaking, though, I'm very proud of the team.
I think they all understand how important this is for residents, what we do.
And I would encourage residents,
if they are displeased with anything,
to shout at me and not at any of our officers or teams.
Because I'm the politically accountable person
and you can find my email address on the internet
and tell me what you think.
But please don't put that pressure on any of our officers
who I think are doing a fantastic job
in challenging circumstances
as they are across so many portfolios.
But yeah, obviously we have an internal HR function
which probably looks at how we support staff
in a bit more detail than that,
sort of outside of my remit.
But certainly in all of my interactions with our officers,
I see people who are very dedicated,
who know the communities that they serve,
and who are really trying to make a difference.
Thank you. Is there anybody who I missed?
Cllr John Chilver - 4:24:01
If not, I think we can bring this session to an end slightly early.
So I just want to thank all the members and officers who attended, participated.
We're very grateful.
And our next session will start at half past three, when we'll look at the resources portfolio.
So thank you all very much.

8 Resources (Councillor Robert Carington)

Cllr John Chilver - 4:24:40
Welcome everybody to this, the fourth session of our Budget Scrutiny Inquiry Task and Finish
Group.
And this session will be looking at the resources portfolio.
Delighted to welcome members and officers on this.
Could everybody please go to mute?
So welcome to Councillor Carrington who is the cabinet member for resources.
And he's supported by corporate directors Sarah Murphy -Brookman and Richard Barker.
the head of finance for all the resources service, Sarah Fogden, and again we have Dave
Skinner, our head of finance, and Fiona Jump, his deputy. So welcome to everybody. I'd like
to invite the cabinet member to introduce the priorities and the overarching strategy
for his budget.
So after which we'll have questions from the committee.
So over to you, Councillor Carrington, thank you.
Thank you very much, Chairman,
and thank you very much for having me here today.
So just very quickly sort of introduce the portfolio
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:25:56
for the benefit of those watching.
So the resources portfolio includes
the Council's support services and is a key enabler
of delivery for all of the corporate plan priorities.
This portfolio has about 30 % of council staff
with services covering, well, as diverse as legal
and democratic services, business operations,
customer services, procurement, finance,
business intelligence, service improvement,
human resources and organisational development,
ICT, revenue and benefits, and property and assets.
Promise those are locked in here.
I'm not reading off my back of my hand.
So the resources directorate is the nerve system of the council,
supporting the council to deliver 700 different lines of business.
I know the leader in his earlier session mentioned how the council has about
1300 lines of business, so with a little bit of smugness, we're over half of that.
So obviously showing the importance of this portfolio.
So the main focus for the portfolio is financial sustainability
within a context of continuous improvement.
So this has been done through elimination of duplication
as we consolidate into single systems
with better Buckinghamshire programme.
We also simplify customer process
to provide great customer experience for our residents
through a customer first culture
across the whole organisation.
And then from the property side,
this is a key area for generating additional income
and capital receipts over the period of the MTFP.
So just to sort of put in context to highlight
some of the key data points in regards to the portfolio,
which can sort of be found on,
I know this is a common thing here on numbering.
I'm gonna say page 142, which is on the right.
I don't know what everyone else is using,
but I mean, this is for some of the key data.
So we have about 455 ,000 contacts on all of our channels,
calls and other forms like the web chat.
We have about 300 ,000 calls per year with about 1 .2 million
website visits.
This will show the customer -facing side of it.
And on the property side, we are managing,
either through organisational or through the investment,
about 1 ,600 property holdings.
Now sort of turning to the main points regarding,
in this MTFP and sort of the changes.
So council offices work for the budget
and the resources portfolio has taken its share
of delivering the savings with a good track record
of past savings of about 7 .58 million since vesting day
with about another 7 .7 by 2829.
We're continuing and increasing our use of AI and automation
to increase efficiencies and deliver savings.
All in all in this, that's going to be about 3 million pounds.
Also to bring to your attention, the key growth item
in this portfolio is the investment
in a new ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning System,
which will be funded from reserves.
This is sort of enabling us to prepare for the future
as our current ERP is going to be 30 years old by the end
of the MTFP and this will come before cabinet
in the next financial year as a decision.
On the property side, we continue our delivery
of property capital projects including the schools programme
and the council's state strategy.
And we are working on initial delivery
of the corporate landlord model.
On the capital side of things,
You will see what I want to highlight to you is we will
obviously have our ICT system refresh and Buckinghamshire
network and continue with our ambitious regeneration programme
which is ably led by my deputy Julie Ward who is actually
sitting behind you over there.
Just now going on to portfolio priorities, I'll just see I have
Quite a few of those which are highlights how wide the portfolio is and the spread of what we cover
But I mean really just the key ones I sort of want to bring to your attention. I've already mentioned the use of AI
and then we also have focus on customer first culture and
important to mention maintaining our strong financial management of a 1 .2 6 billion gross budget and
It's very positive to see in the recent LGA peer review
that they particularly mention this
and say how the council has a sound financial assistance
and processes to manage the position.
So it's good to see that is recognised.
And then this is very much personally to me,
encouraging support, supporting future generations
into farming through a view of council farm tendencies.
I mean that's very much my passion project
and it's definitely a priority.
On the risk side and challenges,
We, as ever, there is danger of capacity change to live on BAU, business as usual, while supporting
the rest of the Council through transformation and change and undergoing our own service
transformation.
It would be remiss of me not to say cyber, as we all know, particularly the mention of
AI, we are in a world where the cyber attacks are starkly increasing, and we have seen that
There have been attacks within this sector,
so that is an absolute key risk and challenge
and one to be aware of.
And then in the property side,
there are always challenges in the landscape there
with major changes and working patterns
being reflected in both demand and the requirements
of what potential tenants want from our properties,
and there is a risk or voice
for upcoming lease break opportunities.
But just to come to an end, despite financial pressures,
most mainly through the fair funding review,
which you will have heard multiple times throughout
the day, this is a balanced budget,
which does deliver for our residents and have a very
competent team here who are the right people to
deliver these changes.
Great, thank you very much.
Do any of the service directors have anything
they wish to add at this point.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:32:39
Councillor Ward, would you like to come and join the table?
Welcome.
Councillor Mehta.
Thank you, Chairman.
So in your speech, you just mentioned
that the resources portfolio includes around $7 .7 million
of savings by 28 -29.
Much of it is linked to automation, AI, and estate
realisation.
Cllr Nidhi Mehta - 4:33:04
So what proportion of these savings is already
contractually secured versus still aspirational?
That's my first question, and then I have follow -up
questions as well.
Okay, well, thank you very much for the question.
So just to quickly paraphrase, so the question
is how much of the AI savings are already
contractually locked in.
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:33:28
So the AI, so the changes we're doing, the AI
the up to three million pounds which I mentioned.
So this is done through a number of things,
particularly co -pilot, Magic Notes,
and Highways Power Automate.
So these are a number of ongoing contracts that we have.
And then we have some new projects
which are being featured in this,
such as blue badge assessments, parking permits,
and I would like to highlight our innovation hub,
Where we encourage our staff to feed in ideas and through that we generate new ideas, but I mean
Sarah is that any?
Yes, thank you so
Clarification so the of the changes that the savings are already
Did too we've got
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 4:34:26
466 ,000 within business operations.
So that's been a saving that has been within the MTFP
for a number of years.
That will be delivered through administration savings
using Copilot.
And it will also be using our AI chat capability, which we
will be putting onto the website.
We just awarded that contract to Zoom.
and we will be implementing that over the next quarter.
We, as part of that piece of work, we will be working with residents,
a resident group that we have in terms of making sure that it delivers
in a way that is effective for them.
I need to also add, as this working group knows from previous conversations,
We will still have a customer service centre where people who do not have the digital capability or the access to digital tools
will be able to ring up agents to be able to
Resolve queries that they might have and we will still have cancel access plus
Arrangements as well where we can do face -to -face meetings
But where residents are able to transact online then we will provide a much more efficient
way of doing that using AI and which will then deploy into our website to be able to answer a multitude of questions.
Whereas at the moment it's relatively narrow because it isn't AI technology.
So to answer your question, 466 is already locked and loaded.
The rest we will then be working through over the next couple of years to assess where we think we can make savings within resources.
And we found with the 466 that we've had essentially two and a bit years to work our way towards
how will we be able to deliver those savings.
It's the same profile again here that you're seeing in front of you.
It gives us time to be able to look at the as is position to consider where the improvements
could be made.
And actually what we're seeing in the marketplace is technology is moving really fast in terms
of what providers are able to offer to councils.
And we're very well networked into other councils as well. So we lead the National Customer Services Group as an example
So it gives us a great insight into what other councils are doing and that has worked really well for us
Thank you just to follow up on that
so
Which savings would fall first if the technology and implementation timetable slips?
Cllr Nidhi Mehta - 4:37:07
So the savings that would
Well, I guess the 466 but I'm not seeing that that is you know, we've got everything in place for that to be able to
to occur
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 4:37:18
So do we have a contingency plan if these savings are delayed
So the service demands are they remain flat or rises
Cllr Nidhi Mehta - 4:37:31
So because we've been working
for a number of years towards achieving the 466. I don't believe that we need a contingency plan.
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 4:37:40
We already, the majority of that has already
been achieved ready for the first of April 2026
of the new financial year.
It's the, the biggest slug of savings that you can see, so on page 149,
happen in the year three of the MTFP within ICT so that will take a
little bit of working up but we've got time to be able to do that that's the
whole purpose of the phasing so we don't have slippage and within resources we
have a very good track record and we haven't required there hasn't been
slippage problems historically. Thank you.
Thank you.
Councillor Darlene.
Good afternoon.
On cyber security, how confident are you that the Council is investing enough to maintain
Cllr John Chilver - 4:38:35
robust cyber security measures?
Cllr Christine Adali - 4:38:37
Is the cyber investment proportionate to the risk, given that it's rather big these days?
Thank you.
So I mean that's a very good question, very relevant for today and for this world which
we are in currently.
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:38:57
So you know cyber is, as I mentioned, is one of the major risks.
I think in my view probably the biggest risk.
This is one we are continually sort of looking into and we are investing in.
We are in a position that we are confident but not complacent.
I mean that's actually the worst thing to be but we I think we have confidence in in our position at the moment
Unless there's anything further you want to add
So just mindful that this is in public session
I think the thing I would add to what councillor Carrington has said is we take it very seriously
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 4:39:36
so we have
Our training that is rolled out across all members of staff and all councillors in terms of raising awareness of
the risks that are inherent in our business and the way that
people and bad actors could target us as well.
So we we take quite a bit, we take a lot of time to invest in that, invest in that training. We also
have scrutiny of our cyber
defences through the risk management group and audit and governance
process as well.
when there's usually a deep dive annually on that
to consider the adequacy of the protection
that we have in place.
And of course, this is also audited as well by auditors.
I mean, just to sort of highlight that, obviously,
within the budget that this is covered
within the GROVE column, particularly network support
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:40:39
and maintenance figure sort of contributes to that.
but most of that is covered by what Sarah has said.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Councillor Wilson.
Thank you, Chairman, and good afternoon, everybody.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:40:56
Three question areas from my point of view.
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 4:40:58
On slide 147, that's the portrait numbering,
Robert, if that's easier for you.
It talked about reduction in commercial asset income,
particularly 28 -29, and I wondered if that was linked to capital receipts, i .e. is it
yield, or is it estate that's driving that? The next questions relate to page
150 and 153, and that's regarding regeneration. So we're making savings on
regeneration headcount, and our capital funding falls away, which I imagine a lot
of that is to do with grant funding.
But given that this is one of our significant priorities,
economic growth and regeneration,
it would be good to understand the assumptions behind that.
And then the final part, I was terrified to see
that there's more money going into elections
because I thought I got the worst
of that put behind me last year.
And I presume that's because we provision the cost
over the duration of the council term,
and not because we've suddenly got a new boundary change
or something else coming through.
And that the shift in member allowances
is the carry forward from last year's budget.
So I'm just, I think those are technical adjustments
based on accounting treatments.
But certainly the material questions
are around the commercial asset income
and then the regeneration resource and investment
because clearly that is a priority for us.
Thank you very much, Councillor Wilson.
And I mean, on the elections one,
you've actually answered your own question on that.
That is correct.
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:42:46
That is in there just for the term and covers,
I mean, also goes down to the parish council elections
as well, so it is just there as a reserve
and as what else you said regarding the backdating.
On the commercial property and agricultural estate,
the change there, so that is really mainly
sort of the estimated economic impact
from economic conditions on a number of our sites,
which is being revised and is working
into the overall strategy and there's also yeah no it's more in regards to
yield rather than estates on that point and then on regeneration and so you so
the question just if you could please raise it about headcount and slide 150
it talks about savings in regeneration headcount of fifty thousand pounds
Cllr Stuart Wilson - 4:44:02
48 ,000 pounds and then linking that to page 153 regeneration capitalist funding
and obviously there's a
In the budget year there's a series of programmes, but then that falls away and I'm presuming a lot of that is driven by grant funding
But clearly we want to have the resource in place to ensure that if and when there is any further grant funding
but we have the resources to drive what is a very, very important part of the Council's strategy, particularly for our town census.
Thank you for that question.
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:44:44
And I think with the regeneration team that we are confident that the saving, which is mentioned there, will not have an impact on the delivery.
was as you mentioned a lot of that is through grant funding.
As you mentioned, we particularly regeneration,
we have a very, very busy financial year plans on that.
A lot of that is already sort of started,
but we are now going live on a number of those.
I mean, with Aylesbury Town Centre,
there are a number of things going on there
with the Cambridge Street Public Realm,
Pavilion Quarter being one of the projects
which is ongoing and is covered within that.
I hope you've all walked on the walkway, which is sort of
covered in that, and we will now be getting on to phase two.
But no, I'm very confident that we do have the capacity
to deliver on those.
I don't know, Richard, is that you, who wants to add some more?
Thanks, Robert.
I think I said accurate and very comprehensive response.
So as you mentioned, Councillor Wilson,
an awful lot of the regeneration investment,
certainly on the capital side, is externally funded.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 4:45:52
The team need to be able to adapt and flex
in accordance with that funding,
and that's what we're looking to achieve
in terms of the revenue -serving link to it.
Of course, that situation might change,
and we'd need to relook at that.
I would also add that in terms of the approach taken
for regeneration, we very much see the Council's role
is around brokering and convening opportunities
for inward investment and not necessarily
as much direct delivery.
So we'll be working with third parties,
particularly developers and other institutions
to help unlock significant investment
in particularly the town centres,
which as you said, remain real political priority
for this council as well.
Thank you.
Councillor Tate.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:46:45
By amazing coincidence, I still wasn't asked all the exact questions I was going to ask,
Cllr Martin Tett - 4:46:50
but can I just ask maybe a financial one on the regen piece? Because it says regeneration,
I think expenditure was 443, then there's 357 from earmarked reserves. Do I assume the
balance is externally funded or is that grants? I don't quite understand the difference between
the 357 and the 443.
Is that anything to do with the shared
prosperity fund disappearing?
Because I thought that was the leader's portfolio.
Just trying to understand the numbers here,
in our role as budget scrutiny.
So that's question one.
In terms of the introduction of more AI
in terms of customer interface,
I guess I'm trying to understand the fit
with your objective, which is, you know, world class service
for residents and so on.
Do you actually monitor the outcomes rather
than just the cost reductions?
Because I think the danger otherwise is it's very easy
to kid ourselves by introducing AI and having some sort
of talking image, you know,
that actually customers are all terribly happy.
Do we actually make sure that customers actually find
that interface as good as, if not better than,
interacting with a real human being and being able to talk to the officers that actually can answer their questions.
So if I could just put those two questions on the table to start with.
Thank you very much, Councillor Risette. I'll take the second one first on AI in how we
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:48:26
monitor this and how we cheque that we are meeting our priority of value for the resident.
So we have an AI
AI framework and we have an AI governance board who have full oversight over our AI
journey and so this board, they approve all the pilots and test cases.
They ensure we are compliant with all legislation, be it GDPR, the Equality Act, national AI
guidance and maintains a register of systems and tools and use and it oversees ethical
reviews and risk assessments.
On measuring the impact, there are a number of KPIs,
which are linked on this, such as percentage of staff that,
obviously, on the time and cost savings, but most importantly,
resident satisfaction is one of the key KPIs for this area.
And on your first question on the regen funding and the
numbers, I mean, Richard, is that one you have going
into the deep dive there.
Thanks, Robert.
The page numbers aren't aligning, which isn't helping.
I know it's a running theme.
The capital funding for regeneration
is covered in the capital programme for regeneration.
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 4:49:43
Just for clarity, I think these are revenue numbers,
because it has, I think, a revenue spend of 443 ,000.
Cllr Martin Tett - 4:49:53
And there's a release from reserves of 357
to fund economic regen.
I'm assuming they're both relating to revenue
Correct me if I'm wrong, and I just wanted to know where the additional money came from for the revenue spent
Again, correct me if I'm wrong and I've just misread this
Not helped by the sheer weight of this pack and the number of pages I have to say
Richard Barker - Corporate Director for Communities - 4:50:22
I think Councillor Taylor, we might just need to confirm that in in writing off offline if that's okay
My suspicion is the balance is funding through the council's base general fund budget for
regeneration, but we'll need to confirm that. Yeah, I guess just wearing the hat from this side of the table
It's it's it's not clear to me reading it exactly how the inputs and the outputs, you know
Cllr Martin Tett - 4:50:46
Balance out where does the funding come from that actually then we we spend
I just want to make sure that everything is fully funded and I guess the overarching question
which is back to Stuart Wilson's question, which is,
this feels like a very small amount of money,
given the ambitions within the economic development strategy.
And I know the leader has a separate budget, also tiny.
Are you confident that you can achieve the objectives
within the economic strategy from this very small amount
of money, albeit that it's a catalyst for drawing
in developer contributions and whatever else?
Thank you for your question.
And I will answer with yes, we are confident that this is obviously funding for town centre
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:51:32
regeneration with the leader having overall economic regeneration.
But as you alluded to in your own question, that this is the catalyst to bring in external
funding and getting engagement with businesses.
So we have a number of business forums, which my deputy, Julie, very ably chairs.
We've just most recently had the AL31 sort of restarting the new business forum there,
and we've had oversubscribed interest, and we'll be having another one.
So we are starting to see the interest.
This is very much the start of the journey, and as you yourself said, this is the catalyst
to bring in external funding.
Just so the answer is very clear, you believe this is a sufficient amount of money to help
deliver the economic development strategy.
Cllr Martin Tett - 4:52:20
I understand it may be all you can put in.
I'm just trying to be clear whether it's a resource
constrained strategy or whether actually this is, you see,
is the optimum amount of money.
For the current town centre regeneration plan, yes.
Great, thanks.
Councillor Dillon?
Thank you, Chairman.
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:52:39
Part of my revenue question is asked by my talk, at least,
but I will talk something else on staffing.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:52:44
Cllr Dev Dhillon - 4:52:48
Council character, do we still have a talent pool?
And what have we, if we're still there, what have we learned over the years with it?
I believe last year we were mentioning something about the talent pool.
And then what is our current leavers rate compared to previous years?
And do we do the exit interview if any staff was leaving us?
that for a reason and for other feedback
to make the council more effective and prudent.
Councillor Tim, thank you very much for your question.
And yes, we still do have our talent register.
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:53:32
So answering your second question,
so we've had 54 employees have been redeployed
over the talent register, which has saved an estimated 1 .46 million pounds, but
Yes, we still very much the talent register is a very key part
of the process and
Yes, of course, we do have exit interviews with all staff which helps feed in to it all
Great Thank You councillor Crabtree
Yes, thank you. Um
Cllr John Chilver - 4:54:12
Cllr Anna Crabtree - 4:54:14
Looking through the changes in the resource budget, you mentioned AI. There's a lot of
changes to
Administration savings or efficiencies automation service reviews things that naturally people want to think of
redundancies the welfare of staff these types of impacts I
I have two connected questions.
One is whether or not there are any redundancy costs associated
with these changes to the portfolio
and whether they are included
within these portfolio budget line items.
And the second one is one that I asked in the last meeting
about whether or not we're appropriately supporting staff
as they go through obviously what must be quite a turbulent
and difficult time and whether senior managers are monitoring
the impact of the service reviews on staff
and the increased pressures put on the teams?
And do you think we're doing enough to support them
at a difficult time?
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your two questions.
And in the first one regarding redundancy costs being worked
in, the answer to that is yes, they
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:55:14
are worked into the calculations in front of you.
And how we support staff through this very difficult process.
So we have a very robust system in place of,
they have all sorts of options,
I mean talking to line managers,
I mean talking with HR,
there is a very well sort of well thought out process
and they have access throughout it all
and as I answered Councillor Dillon,
there is also the talent register is available to them.
So yes, we do have a robust structure in place.
I mean, Sarah, is there anything more you want to add
on either of those?
I think probably just to add to what Councillor Carrington's
already said is that the scale of change
that the organisation has been through since vesting day
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 4:56:08
is quite significant.
So we've undertaken in the region of 66 team reviews,
impacting 4 ,188 posts, we've had nine GP transfers,
and a further 1 ,574 structural changes.
So the scale of change that the organisation
is used to dealing with is really significant.
And with that, we've developed a really robust process
in terms of how we engage with staff.
So it is about, as you would expect,
two -way communication, line managers really
taking responsibility for the change proposal
that they put forward, encouraging staff
to engage with that process, to put forward their ideas as well so that we can modify
as appropriate. So it isn't to say that change is uncomfortable for people, but we have quite
sophisticated processes in place and then there is in addition to that things like our employee
assistance programme, our trade unions and employee reps are also involved in terms of augmenting and
Supporting supporting staff as well, and I think finally the final thing to say as well
Is that our turnover is relatively low within the council so it's around 10 %
I mean there is between the different portfolio stroke directorates
But what managers are very adept at now is when people inevitably?
leave for different reasons or
retire and so on, then they will hold posts vacant so that you don't actually have to make somebody redundant.
And we can then move people around and redeploy them within the
within the remaining post. So we, through both the talent register and that
being adept at managing the vacancies as they fall due, it allows us to reduce the redundancy cost and it allows us to retain
talent within the organisation and still deliver our savings.
Thank you very much.
Councillor Sneeve.
Thank you very much.
Cllr John Chilver - 4:58:18
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 4:58:24
I'm going to go back to this economic investment and regeneration, which was the page 153 on the narrow bits.
And I'm looking at the money there and I too feel there isn't enough money in there to do the tasks that we need to do.
and it's only there for one year.
Matter of fact, if I look at what you've actually got there,
apart from the high street funds,
High Wycombe town centre money I think has been funded from sale,
from what I can see on the next page.
So, I have a concern, and the issue is,
that there's more to High Wycombe than the town centre,
there's all the surrounding wards and areas,
and there's just not enough money in here.
If we're going to do, and this is the questions to you, and I'd like to have the answer to this,
have we got enough money in there to actually where it's needed most?
Is there jobs going to be happening beyond commuting to London?
And is there going to be skills that you're going to develop for local people?
And all these SMEs that we've got in our town, and all of the empty shops,
You know, I mean, is what you've got there going to deliver?
I don't think so.
Please, please tell me otherwise.
Thank you very much for your question, Councillor Snave.
So as I have already said, yes, I do feel we have enough in there.
Cllr Robert Carington - 4:59:45
I mean, with High Wycombe, so High Wycombe, since so some has had about £15 million in
it.
And as I mentioned in my answer to Councillor Tett, this is the catalyst.
There is also the external funding which is coming in.
I'm very glad you mentioned skills actually
that we, the Buckinghamshire College Group,
I know they recently announced
that they are expanding their campus in High Wycombe.
Then we also have the investment
from the university there as well.
So yes, there is the investment.
Thank you. Councillor Huxley.
Cllr John Chilver - 5:00:30
Thank you, Chairman. Taking an appointment Councillor Tett made about talking to human
Cllr Andy Huxley - 5:00:38
means. Is it too early to say how well we are doing with AI and all that entails in
that situation?
Well, no, thank you very much for your question.
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:01:04
Yes, so as I mentioned in my answer to, I think it was
Councillor Tett, regarding our AI governance board and
particularly how the most important thing which they
monitor on the KPI is regarding customer satisfaction.
So we are currently, we measure customer satisfaction rates.
We have a target of 70%, and we are currently on 74 .4%.
I mean, this is one we continuously monitor,
but we are above our KPI targets on that one.
So many horror storeys about AI, what
Cllr Andy Huxley - 5:01:51
it delivers at certain times, then I just wonder whether at 74 .4 percent it's high enough.
I'd say, yeah, Sarah.
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:02:06
So we, so one of the other ways that we monitor our resident satisfaction is not only through
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 5:02:09
polling at the end of the web chat, but also through any complaints that we might receive
as well from residents and service users and we've had no complaints at all about
about using either our current web chat service and or wait times and or the service that
they've received from our customer service centre.
Thank you very much. We've got time for another round of questions. Meanwhile while you're
Cllr John Chilver - 5:02:43
thinking, perhaps I could just slip in a quick question, which is about the new ERP system.
Have we now decided what system we're going to be using going forward, and are we sure
it will be revenue and not capital?
Thank you very much for the question, and as I mentioned, we are sort of beginning the
journey looking into this.
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:03:06
So a paper will be coming to cabinet at some point this year, but I know the answer to
is no we have not picked a system as of yet but more information will come in
the next financial year. The poll. Thank you Chairman. I know it's going to go
Cllr John Chilver - 5:03:28
into the 27 -28 budget but the future future high streets fund has an
Cllr Chris Poll - 5:03:31
allocation of seven million for this budget year but but then nothing
afterwards is that likely to be replaced or are we looking at the stagnation in
that investment from that particular fund so I'm looking at you might have
page one four five page one five three in our pack thank you for the question
and no there is nothing more in the capital budgets at the moment thank you
Councillor Titt.
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:04:06
Yes, thank you.
Just a clarification from an earlier answer
Cllr John Chilver - 5:04:13
and then another question.
The member allowance thing,
Cllr Martin Tett - 5:04:16
just looking at the technicality of it,
how can that be a roll forward from a previous budget?
Because these are changes in this budget, aren't they?
So they should only be representing new changes,
not those agreed in previous years.
So I'm just a little bit confused
on the answers to that question.
But that's more a technicality than anything on principle.
My question is actually around the net change to rental income from commercial assets.
And I can't remember if this was raised by another member of the panel.
I thought I heard something very similar come up.
But there's significant reduction of $101, $820, and then $1 .3 million.
And I guess the question is, you know, what's driving that?
And also, have you taken enough into account, given the state of the economy at the moment
and the depression in a lot of the commercial world, are you confident that the net loss
in rental income is sufficiently compensated for in these numbers?
What worries me is actually, unless the economy does a miraculous turnaround in the next few
years, which some people will pray for, particularly in 11 Downing Street.
but the worry is that we will not generate
those commercial returns that are pretty integral
to this budget.
Thank you very much for your questions.
And on the rental income, taking that one first,
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:05:43
so this is, the calculation, this has been based
on gross income from 24, 25, so basically what is known
and what is coming forward, and sort of has then been worked
of the calculation and so no, we are confident
that this does reflect it.
I mean, we've obviously, there is a level of an assumption
in this, but we have taken from our calculations
that this should deal with what surprises the world,
particularly the government may throw at us.
I mean, there may be further U -turns down the line
and we are trying to sort of prepare as much as we can,
but I think the figure with the information we have is sufficient at the moment.
And regarding the member allowances and technicality point,
I mean, Sarah Oder, Sarah Houghton on that one.
Thank you, Councillor.
So in the current year that we're in, 25 -26,
the change to members allowance wasn't effective from the 1st of April.
It came in later in the year.
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 5:06:48
So there's a change in the budget required for 26 -27 to make it a full year effect.
Sarah Fogden - Head of Finance for Resources - 5:06:58
Sorry, just for the benefit of anyone listening to you, so Stuart just whispered in my ear.
So the change member allowances wasn't part of last year's budget? I thought it was.
Cllr Martin Tett - 5:07:06
It was something.
Yes, yes it was. But in last year it was just a part year impact. So we have to just add the bit on what we need for 26, 27 for it to be a full year.
Sarah Fogden - Head of Finance for Resources - 5:07:19
to have all my money for a full year.
Why is it shown, again I'm not on that particular page so stop me if I'm incorrect,
Cllr Martin Tett - 5:07:30
but I thought it was shown over three years rolling forward as a saving.
I can't get my head around why that's the case given that it applies effectively to an incomplete year in 25 -26.
But then it should be done and dusted.
I mean that should now be in the base budget.
Why is it shown as a change in the saving going forward?
Because of that part year impact we're going to spend more in 26 27 than we did in 25 26
Sarah Fogden - Head of Finance for Resources - 5:08:02
So that goes in the budget for 26 27. Yes, but then why is it shown for the following two years?
It's unchanged and but you used and keep a cumulative. All right, so it's just it's just then effective. Okay, I understand it entirely
Thank you for that
Dave did you want to come in on this?
Sarah Murphy-Brookman - Corporate Director for Resources - 5:08:18
Cllr Martin Tett - 5:08:19
I think that's right, it's just the full year impact in 26, 27, then going through from
Cllr John Chilver - 5:08:23
the fact that there's an election in May, which just doesn't happen to very nicely align
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 5:08:26
with our financial years, and then it's then.
I'm fine with the answer.
Flat going forwards.
Any more questions?
Since I'm on a roll here, it's my overarching question on reserves.
Cllr John Chilver - 5:08:41
I mean, I've raised this now, I think every cabinet member that's been here, including
Cllr Martin Tett - 5:08:47
the leader, we seem to be using a lot of reserves to fund various things in each of the portfolios.
And I guess what concerns me wearing a budget scrutiny hat is if we are running down effectively,
in layman's terms, our savings, yeah, it's like taking money out of your bank account
each and every year to maintain your standard of living, how sustainable is that going forward?
And are you confident this portfolio is sustainable given the use of reserves?
And in total, to Mr. Skinner, are you comfortable that actually overall our use of reserves
is prudent and sustainable?
I'll go first, maybe, on that one.
So my assessment is that our reserves are prudent and sustainable going forwards.
David Skinner - Director of Finance & S151 Officer - 5:09:39
caveat that slightly with we need to find out what's going on with the DSG
override in particular in that in terms of that would have a significant impact
on us and the government needs to set out positive intervention in that space
and take that responsible responsibility on which I think and the sector would
agree is their their legal responsibility the use of reserves
either for specific activities for which that money was put aside in the first
place I think is appropriate and is correct in terms of going forwards in
in this portfolio, then the use of reserves to,
and the timing issues in terms of to put money aside
to help fund the development of the new ERP system,
again, I think is appropriate.
That's one -off investment that gets us going forward.
What we can't do is use reserves to prop up the base budget,
and what I don't see is any examples of that going forward.
So I see use of reserves to help support activity
going forward, both in this portfolio and in others,
but I don't use them to prop up the ongoing activity going forward.
Obviously, what we've got is a situation where the reserves overall are reducing, but that's
what we would expect to see in terms of going forward.
I'll just add to that regarding my portfolio.
So, obviously, the main use of the resources, as I've mentioned, is the ERP.
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:11:04
I mean, this is an absolutely vital bit of work.
I mean, to sort of use a rather scratchy analogy, it's like your boiler.
It sort of helps.
It basically powers the organisation, and you can use it to, it has a certain life,
and we are approaching the end of the life, and so we are at the stage where we do need
to do this work and the uses of reserves are going to help enable us to do this.
Thank you. Councillor Snave.
Thank you. Sorry to come back on this issue, but I'm sitting here extremely uncomfortable
Cllr John Chilver - 5:11:41
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 5:11:43
with the amount of money that you've actually got in there in the economic investment for
Wycombe. So could you actually give me the tangible outcomes that you're actually going
deliver with that amount of money please?
I'm sorry, when you say tangible outcomes, do you mean sort of the full list of what the money's being spent on?
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:12:05
I mean, what the results? What do you mean when you say tangible?
What the net benefits are going to be for High Wycombe from allocating that money and using it wisely?
what you're actually going to deliver,
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 5:12:18
what we'll see different in this town as a result of that.
Well what you will see is the delivery
of the Denmark Street projects,
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:12:29
you will see the new council offices there,
you will see the county archives being moved
from Aylesbury to High Wycombe,
you will see the work being done on the Guildhall,
you'll see the work done on the Chair Museum,
the old Liberal Club.
You will see those are the tangible results you will see the money being being put in
Did you want to come back on that yes sadly a lot of those things the people of high Wicca don't want
Cllr John Chilver - 5:13:03
Cllr Trevor Snaith - 5:13:05
Cllr John Chilver - 5:13:11
Well, those are decisions which have been made through the Democratic process.
The decision has been made and I mean if you're saying the people of Wycombe don't want this,
I haven't received a single email from anyone saying they don't want this.
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:13:26
So I really kind of understand how you reach that particular statement unless you have
in your back pocket, a sort of full petition with sort
of every single member of High Wycombe, or every resident
of High Wycombe, sorry, not member, because I know
we had a very highly attended rally outside QVR
of what was it, 20 people.
So I think the difference between member and residence
is quite tangible.
But I would say if people do have, please write to me,
and we can look on that front.
Can I just ask a question about the retasking
of the Winslow Centre, which I think is on the same page,
Cllr John Chilver - 5:14:05
page 153, where we've got over nine million pounds
in the 2728 capital budget.
Is there going to be any cabinet report on this
in the foreseeable future?
And I'll be confident that the budget is adequate,
because I think it's been at that level
for quite some time now.
Thank you very much for the question.
And, yeah, so currently the proposals for the site
development are being reviewed.
Cllr Robert Carington - 5:14:38
And we are still confident that the figure mentioned
is sufficient.
And, yes, there will be a cabinet report at some point,
but I can't give you an exact date of this moment in time.
Great.
Thank you very much indeed.
Any other questions from any members at all?
Cllr John Chilver - 5:14:55
If not, I think we can finish this session slightly early.
So thank you very much indeed for everybody's attendance and participation.
In fact, throughout this first day of the budget inquiry, I'm very grateful for all
the input that we've had.
I'd like to thank people who have joined online through the webcast and members of the public
who sent in their questions.
We start again tomorrow morning at 10 o 'clock and we will be first looking at the culture
and leisure portfolio.
So tomorrow at 10 o 'clock.
Meanwhile thank you very much, enjoy the rest of the day.
Thank you and goodbye.