The Committee received a monitoring report that detailed the financial outturn position of the Council at the end of Quarter 2 for 2017-18 compared to budget, and service performance against targets. This included the Quarter 2 position for the:

• General Fund (GF) Revenue Budget Position
• Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Budget Position
• GF and HRA Capital Programme Performance
• Savings
• Progress delivering Council Growth Priorities, including Mayoral Priority Growth
• Forecast use of Reserves
• S106, CIL and Capital Receipts Income
• Council Tax and Business Rates Income
• Debtors & Creditors
• Treasury Management Activities
• Pension Fund Investments Position

The questions and comments from Members on the report may be summarised as follows:

The Committee:

• Noted that in July 2016 the Cabinet had approved £1.1m for the Council to work with a strategic partner to deliver change in its services.  To assist in the delivery of a diverse range of proposals the Council undertook to identify a strategic partner who would support the Council in all aspects of the delivery of those proposals.  The procurement exercise was won by Grant Thornton LLP and the three year contract had annual break points, however a number of projects came forward faster than anticipated so it had been necessary to undertake decisions using the urgency provisions;
• Asked for clarification on whether the Grant Thornton Contract went to the Best Value Board;
• Requested to receive clarification on how the Council (i) assesses which wards/sub-wards are the most in need; and (ii) monitors that the money from the planning charge or Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) goes to where there is the greatest need?
• Wanted to know how is an evidence-base used to inform expenditure of CIL funding?
• If a full capital programme will be developed to inform expenditure over 10-15 years?
• Noted that the Government’s reinvigoration of the Right to Buy system in April 2012, has led to a significant increase in the number of right to buy applications. Key elements of the policy were the increase of the maximum discount available to tenants and a change to the previous Right to Buy capital receipt pooling arrangements whereby now local authorities can retain receipts for replacement housing – provided they can sign up to an agreement with Government that they will limit the use of the net Right to Buy receipts to 30% of the cost of the replacement.  The Authority has therefore entered an agreement with the Government to allow it to retain a proportion of Right to Buy receipts to be spent on replacement social housing, with the following conditions:  (i) Retained ‘one for one’ receipts cannot fund more than 30% of total spend (ii) Receipts cannot be used in conjunction with funding from the GLA/HCA; (iii) Receipts must be spent within three years or be returned with interest; and (iv) Receipts cannot be given to a body in which the local authority has a controlling interest.  Although, the authority may use the receipts to grant fund another body, such as a Registered Provider (RP)
• Noted that the Planning Obligation  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9