Minutes:
Councillor Graham Arthur, Portfolio Holder for Resources, addressed the Committee, giving a summary of his work and focussing in particular on the Council’s financial position. He explained how the Council had the lowest spend per head in London and the lowest Council tax in outer London, and had already saved £50m per annum on its revenue budgets. Savings had been taken early, baseline reviews had been used to establish essential service levels, taking into account statutory requirements, and services were being assessed to be delivered in the most cost effective ways. £30m of assets had been disposed of in the previous year, and staffing had been reduced to around 1,900. Staff had risen to the challenge of the difficult circumstances and the local pay arrangements meant that they had received higher pay increases than under national agreements, bottom-loaded to help the lower paid. Property investments had yielded £1.8m above budget expectations and council tax collection rates remained firm despite the changes to benefits. There was a rigid firewall between capital and revenue expenditure, which was tightly controlled. The IT portal was now up and running, to enable more services to be accessed online, which was cheaper for the Council. A new Head of IT had been appointed, an area where the Council could improve, and there were real possibilities for partnership with the health service.
The Portfolio Holder responded to questions on the following issues –
· There was a deeper role for Members in scrutiny, particularly on contracts, where Members needed to ensure that services were properly specified and designed, that contracts were negotiated successfully and monitored effectively. He accepted that Members would need training to adapt to new roles.
· Efficiencies needed to be squeezed out of services before they were outsourced; services needed to be bundled together effectively to attract the right bids, but in some case retaining in-house or a staff-run enterprise could be the best solution. Some Councils had created large outsourced contracts prematurely and were now faced with having to take services back in-house.
· Historically, the Council did not have a comprehensive register of its property assets, but this had been done in the last six months and it was important to review which properties were really needed. A Member commented that there were still too many paper records which had not been digitised.
· There was an incentive to develop and build through the New Homes Bonus and Business Rate Retention, but there would be difficult decisions to be made about green belt and better use needed to be made of brown land. The impact of the new Homes Bonus was potentially disappointing and the Council should not rely on this – it had to be prudent.
· While the Council had been successful in bring staff numbers down, the Local Government Pension Scheme was generous and expensive, and contractors were reluctant to take on pension liabilities. There were complex issues involved which the Pensions Investment Sub-Committee would be investigating.
· The Council was working with other boroughs to provide joint services more efficiently, and this was likely to increase in the coming years.