Issue - meetings

For the Budget Scrutiny Panel to report back to the Committee with their findings and make recommendations to the Executive in line with the Council’s budget and policy procedure rules.

Members considered the report from the Budget Scrutiny Review Panel which met on 21 November 2019 to discuss and consider the Service and Financial Planning budget proposals for 2020/21. The report would be considered by the Executive on 30 January 2020 in line with the Council budget and policy procedure rules.

The Panel report was introduced by the Chair of the Budget Scrutiny Review Panel, Councillor N. Harrison. The conclusions of the Panel were set out in the report and summarised in the Executive Summary. He thanked the Executive Member for Finance, Executive and Officers for preparing the initial revenue and capital budget proposals for 2020/21.

The Panel concluded that the Council managed its finances well and had maintained services and delivered priority projects despite the removal of the Government Revenue Support Grant in 2017/18. The revenue underspend of £1.6m for 2018/19 compared to the approved budget this year and the current forecast for 2019/20, being an underspend of almost £800k, underlined this point.

The Panel report said that the proposed Budget for 2020/21 was a cautious one as it did not overstate revenue and set out fully costed expenditure items. It was a detailed and well-developed budget. However, there was more detail to come including any additional Capital Programme budget growth proposals for 2020/21 to 2024/25, the review of Central Budgets and Revenue Reserves and the final Council Tax increase proposals. The final budget proposals to support delivery of the Corporate Plan, Housing Delivery Strategy and Environmental Sustainability Strategies were also still to be finalised. Therefore, the Panel recommended that the Committee should allocate time at its 23 January 2020 meeting for a more substantive review of these elements before it drew its conclusions on the overall Budget proposals.

The Panel report noted the increase in the services revenue budget of £2.12m which included funding to pay for 23 new posts. It was concerned that this overall increase could be unsustainable in the long term, unless additional sustainable revenue income sources are brought on stream. The Council was developing its commercial approach, but this work was progressing slowly, and the increase in new commercial investment income for 2020-21 is not significant. In the light of this the Panel advised caution.

The Panel Chair noted that Recommendation (i) (c) considered the potential negative impact of the savings and growth proposals on service delivery to be minimal and there were certain areas where there were service improvements.

Panel Members told the Committee that the recent general election and other areas of uncertainty such as the levels of government spending, pension costs and impacts of cuts to Surrey Council Council’s budgets were also other significant elements of the budget that meant it should be looked at again at the January meeting.

Panel Members highlighted that another area where proposals and spending plans were not yet clear was on environmental sustainability and how the Council was responding to climate change. It was noted that more information was set out in paragraph 27 of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18