Agenda item

F Jump presented the quarter two budget information and asked Committee for any questions.

The Chairman arrived.

Cllr England mentioned that we discussed garages in September but there was similar pressure against income but the maintenance was still continuing a little bit better than it seems to have been done in the intervening period.  Cllr England asked about the timescales of all of this because we seem to be haemorrhaging a little bit of money but I can’t see how quickly we are addressing this.  F Williamson advised that a project manager that was mentioned, in respect of someone coming in to oversee the garage project has started.  He joined us on Monday and has already compiled a lot of information in respect of the condition of the garages coming through to the stock condition survey, but we are also looking at demand.  Next week we will be undertaking telephone survey of all the people who have registered an interest in garages to get further information on that, with the aim of trying to get as many garages let to those people who are already interested.  Following on from that he’s got another recommendation that will be going to Corporate Management Team next week.  L Roberts added that for the period of time that he’s here he will be reporting to her, because he has been brought in under the New Normal banner.  He’s a very experienced consultant, very enthusiastic and making good progress.  Also she has mentioned before that there is some analysis that’s already in the budget so he will be making use of that as well as interrogating some of the data that they are due to collect in the next coming weeks.  L Roberts confirmed that she and F Williamson are working very closely on the project, so it’s one of our top priorities at the moment.

Cllr England asked for clarification that we are now listing live availability of garages.  L Roberts confirmed that we are.

Cllr Freedman queried where almost all lines of the capital project lives in the slippage and asked if there was a way we could alter it so that effectively if you need to phase it to when the Council needs to have the resources available to be able to build things, but we had another part on the realistic expectation on the side, would help to be able to read this.  If that’s not possible maybe having something that would actually giving predictions of any actual overspends, the way I’m reading this at the moment, every time I’m seeing the slippage, I’m thinking there’s potentially bad news that we’re not going to see until the last year that something is reported.  It might make the report a little bit easier.  F Jump said we can certainly address those points, in the capital information you are presented, it’s not necessarily that straightforward to analyse.  We do try and identify the in year variance, so you’re right we do the in year variance, but where there is slippage if there was an issue you wouldn’t necessarily see that until future financial years.  F Jump will look at how possible it is to actually report on future year variances, because at this point if we are expecting expenditure to take place in the future it might be difficult to actually quantify if there is an issue regarding an overspend.

The Chairman understood that the format that you’re after is actually the format that’s submitted in Finance and Resources, so don’t know if there is some marrying up on that.  F Jump said there is potential but the format of the actual information that’s provided is the same across all Overview and Scrutiny Committees, it’s just what you see here is just the schemes that relate to this Committee area, so there is potentially some adjustment that we could do to this report.  The Chairman did not want Officers doubling up if one of your colleagues is already doing it.  F Jump will have a look at doing it.

Cllr Freedman said that a simple narrative will probably going to fine.  The whole point of seeing a slippage and it saying, we anticipate we will have an actual overspend of £50k for example, it might not be committed but it tells us what we’re expecting, whatever is the easiest way to do it, for other people to understand as well. 

Cllr Mahmood asked for clarity when something slips from one year to the next does that mean that the following years budget we spent any more money forward and are we saving money.  F Jump advised that with slippage we are talking about expenditure that has been approved or ready, it’s just a timing matter, if we don’t spend in this year we are bringing it to a future financial year, but it’s the actual total financial envelope is not changing for that particular scheme.  Cllr Mahmood said my question was if we had spent it in the year it was supposed to be spent we might have had more money to do other things and wondered whether if it got put to the back and spent the previous years money so we can’t spend this years money.

The Chairman asked everyone to switch their microphones on as they don’t seem to be switched on.

F Jump clarified that if the money is spent in the current financial year it won’t affect the approved budget for future financial years because the total amount that’s been approved for a particular scheme is agreed, it wouldn’t change what’s available.  If anything else was sought then that would need to go to an additional approval process.  Cllr Mahmood said that he was thinking of the person looking after the budget and resource allocation, given the slip it might mean more resources and delays.  Contractors are probably costing us more because they are longer on the job.  F Jump said that it would depend on the situation.  With some slippage there may be an associated additional cost, if there was that would need to be addressed as part of the ongoing budget setting process and go through the necessary approval process.  In some cases of slippage, it will be just that, it will be similar levels of expenditure, just the occurrence of it would have moved.

Cllr Griffiths mentioned that any project that is starting to go over budget, can’t go over budget without approval of Cabinet or Council.  Therefore if slippage has started it will be fed through in the report to this Committee.  There was an update from the Housing perspective on project that were in train, it said there that one of the projects, Corn Mill Court, has had an overspend, but there is a lot of work going on with the contractor, issues that the Committee were kept up to date with all through the issue.  If there is slippage and it’s going to mean more money is needed on the development, certainly from a housing perspective it will come back to this Committee.

Cllr Mahmood asked if we are managing it properly in terms of the person in charge, if things are slipping I think they’re taking longer, it’s costing someone more money to do the same job.  Maybe the management of the process is lacking, that’s why we’re slipping.  We are getting slippages quite regularly and is just trying to get to the bottom of it, is it the management or for technical reasons.  Cllr Griffiths highlighted that it can be down to we’ve put a process in place, but you have to do consultation, you’re buying sites etc, some of it is just the process we go through.  We’ve got quite an aggressive programme of building, we’re working to the best capacity we can, within the resources available and some of it will be the way the Council works, perhaps the results don’t come back the way we’re expecting.  You can do a consultation, which perhaps needs to modify the plan again and then you need to consult again, so it can be lots of different reasons, but they are all reported back here and the budget is set for that project, so if there is a bigger spend, the one that springs to mind the one we retrofitted water sprinkler system on Kylna Court, that was obviously an overspend on that and it caused slippage because we asked them to stop while we put in the sprinklers.  That was a decision of this Council, that’s what we wanted to do.  Quite often it’s actually our fault that it slips because we suddenly want something done that wasn’t in there originally.  We are up to capacity in what we are building at the moment, in both terms of finance and in terms of the staffing.  It’s a case of planning all of that, there’s nobody sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

F Williamson said that all of the projects are looked at on an individual basis and go to Performance Board, where all of the projects and the reasons for any delays are taken into account there.  In terms of the project management, F Williamson didn’t feel that was the issue, sometimes it’s because we’ve allocated a budget in a given year and for those unforeseen circumstances or for longer consultation or potentially planning issues, it means that it can take longer to start on site.  Also once we’re on site, in terms of Christmas shutdown period, the decision was made to delay Northend and Westerdale until after January so that we didn’t have them start on site at the beginning of December, have a shut down period and then restart.  Some of them are strategic decisions that are made, but it’s not really project management issues as such.

The Chairman questioned the work that was previously done by Osborne and it’s now down with Clean, Safe and Green, she just wanted to know a little bit more about that and wanted to know a little bit more about that, if that’s a continuing trend or decision that we’ve made.  F Williamson advised that was in relation to garden clearances, Clean, Safe and Green indicate that they had some capacity within one of their teams to be able to undertake garden clearances, because they did have spare capacity , it’s using existing resource and they were able to generate the income so it was a transfer to HRA to the General Fund to Clean, Safe and Green.  The problem that we’ve been having with some of the delays that Osborne are created awaiting their clearance contractors and also they were using skips to dispose of garden waste, which was not the most economic way of doing so.  The Chairman mentioned that it was quite a big saving.

The Chairman asked about the strategic acquisitions, if that was part of the buy back scheme that the property was purchased.  F Williamson confirmed that we do not have an acquisition policy, there is under the right to buy scheme the covenant whereby properties have to be offered to us on a first refusal basis.  The details of the background were provided and due to the circumstances and looking at it from business case, because it’s a two bed property which is in high demand, the actual cost to purchase that back is lower than our current development costs, because there were a number of factors that influenced the decision, we took the decision to purchase the property back.

Cllr Adeleke confirmed the recommendations that Committee note the report and it was agreed.

The Chairman apologised to Committee for not being here at the start of the meeting.