Biffa asks Wirral’s Cabinet for a 10 year extension to bins & street cleaning contract worth at least £120 million

Biffa asks Wirral’s Cabinet for a 10 year extension to bins & street cleaning contract worth at least £120 million

Biffa asks Wirral’s Cabinet for a 10 year extension to bins & street cleaning contract worth at least £120 million

                                                      

Biffa Waste Service Limited November 2013 Invoice Wirral Council £1036840.28
Biffa Waste Service Limited November 2013 Invoice Wirral Council £1036840.28
Biffa Waste Service Limited December 2013 Invoice Wirral Council £1032201.28
Biffa Waste Service Limited December 2013 Invoice Wirral Council £1032201.28
Biffa Waste Service Limited January 2014 Invoice Wirral Council £1032201.28
Biffa Waste Service Limited January 2014 Invoice Wirral Council £1032201.28

Above are three of the recent monthly invoices to Wirral Council from Biffa Waste Services Limited for November 2013 (£1,036,840.28), December 2013 (£1,032,201.28) and January 2014 (£1,032,201.28).

I did not request the invoices for other months during that financial year (2013/14), but I would assume that the other nine are for similar amounts of around a million pounds. So why am I writing about this and what does Biffa Waste Services Limited actually do for it’s ~£12 million it receives each year from the taxpayer?

Well as shown on the invoices it’s for collecting the bins, cleaning the streets and extra amounts for working on a Bank Holiday. I’ll be looking more closely at the current contract with Biffa Waste Services Limited (which runs to 2017) tomorrow morning (if all goes well).

However there is some political news on the Biffa front, in fact Wirral Council seems to be bolstering itself for a bit of bad press coverage judging by the Cabinet papers for tonight’s Cabinet meeting (only tonight if you happen to reading this on the 11th September 2014).

If you’re interested in reading the papers yourself on Wirral Council’s website, it’s the Streetscene Environment Services Contract Extension item which is item 4 on Cabinet’s agenda.

I remember Mark Smith (a Wirral Council officer who is Head of Environment and Regulation) getting a grilling by the Chair (Rt Hon Frank Field MP) at a recent Birkenhead Constituency Committee meeting about what the Rt Hon Frank Field MP seemed to see as a lack of openness and transparency in the area of how Wirral Council manages the Biffa contract.

In the Rt Hon Frank Field MP’s view (from my memory of the meeting) he wanted (rather reasonably some might say) to know exactly what the public were getting for the ~£12 million a year that the taxpayer pays Biffa Waste Services Limited through Wirral Council. Sadly there was no one present at the meeting to answer for Biffa Waste Services Limited and Mark Smith seemed to struggle a little to give the kind of answers that Rt Hon Frank Field MP seemed to want to hear. However moving on from the frustrations of Birkenhead’s MP/Chair of the Birkenhead Constituency Committee to more local politics (although isn’t all politics local)?

Rather helpfully Appendix 5 to the Streetscene Environment Services Contract Extension item contains the following two entries on the risk register (copied below):

Risk No Description of risk Risk category Risk Owner Gross likelihood Score Gross impact score Total Gross Score Net Likelihood Score Net Impact Score Total Net Score Proposed Controls Responsibility Target date RAG Status
1 District Audit scrutiny on decision process likely Legal / Regulatory Tara Dumas 3 4 12 3 2 6 Member decision based on thorough analysis of risks. Best value comparison work to be undertaken – Local benchmarking plus APSE/Audit commission comparison Update on market position sought from previous consultants contracted to review Biffa contract. Process to be reviewed by internal audit TD
TD
TD
MGa
07/07/14
completed
07/07/14
07/07/14
G
C
G
G
2 Negative political and
media attention
Political/societal PR team – Kathryn Green 5 3 15 3 2 6 Proactive approach by PR with press releases Confirm offer not linked to service/workforce changes LF Post decision 31/5/2014 G
C

In other words, Wirral Council know (before any decision is formally made tonight to enter into negotiations) that it will cause all kinds of trouble. They’ve already decided (it seems) on a public relations line of telling the press it won’t lead to job losses/workforce changes and giving them the “gift” of a press release in the hope that most of the media will just print the press release more or less verbatim and not ask too many awkward questions about the matter.

They even know their external auditor (Grant Thornton) will be asking them a whole bunch of questions to do with it too but surprisingly there are even bigger risks than the media and Wirral Council’s auditors to tackle, although read the risk register at appendix 5 and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.

So how can I sum up what is proposed to be decided tonight quickly? The current contract will Biffa Waste Services Limited will end on March 2017.

The impression I get from reading between the lines of the Cabinet papers, (a lot of the detail has been kept deliberately secret by officers who are recommending to politicians to keep it secret too on grounds of commercial confidentiality) is that Biffa Waste Services Limited seemed to be somewhat concerned that if their multi-million pound 11 year contract ends on March 2017, that they would have to bid in a competitive tender against other companies and organisations for the new contract.

There’s then uncertainty (from Biffa’s perspective) over whether they would end up being the successful bidder or not. It’s called “competition” and is generally required for such large multi-million pound contracts because of all kinds of laws I won’t go into at this point and competition is therefore required for a whole bunch of good reasons.

So someone as Biffa Waste Services Limited has read through the contract they have with Wirral Council and found a caveat. There was a part in the contract that could extend it a further ten years (current prices of ~£12 million a year but yearly increases and variation are usually built-in). This contract covers “all household waste and recycling collections, street cleansing and fly tip removal, waste collection from schools and council offices and wheeled bin deliveries.”

All Biffa had to do to get a further ten years (at ~£12 million a year) was make a formal offer to Wirral Council (which they did) and have this agreed to by Wirral Council (which hasn’t happened yet with the earliest date expected being October 2014).

Due to the size of the amounts involved it has to be a decision made by politicians, specifically Wirral Council’s Cabinet and the councillor with responsibility for this area is the new(ish) Cabinet Member for Environment and Sustainability Councillor Bernie Mooney (who replaced Brian Kenny earlier this year when he lost an election in May to the Green Party councillor Pat Cleary).

However what’s in the currently exempt appendices?

Well appendix 1 covers the “value and suggested terms of the formal offer from Biffa in return for the Council extending the contract to 2027. In summary the proposal offers the Council a one-off saving split between 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17 followed by a continued annual reduction in the core contract price throughout the remainder of the extended contract period to the equivalent value. Officers asked Biffa to clarify the benefits to Biffa if the contract extension was agreed.”

I’m not allowed to link to appendix 1 (as it’s currently a big secret and you’d get an “access denied” type message from Wirral Council’s website if I did), but as the language used by a Wirral Council officer is rather opaque, it has to boil down to how I imagine a summary of what Biffa offered Wirral Council … “give us a further ten years and we will give you very good price if you pick us. Our price is very reasonable, many savings to be had, very good price, you buy from us again we treat you well. We are very good supplier and will take your bins to tip and keep streets clean for another 10 years for a very reasonable price.”

Wirral Council officers asked Biffa to clarify what Biffa would get out of extending the contract a further ten years.

Biffa responded to this on the 10th February 2014. Again I’m not allowed to show you Biffa’s response either on the instructions of Wirral Council officers!

The summary of this response is again in rather opaque language “Biffa indicated that the savings they could offer arose from avoiding future procurement and mobilisation costs, the ability to re-finance their operations and a reduction in overheads due to the stable nature of the contract. The discount is not linked to any service changes.”

In other words Biffa are saying “grant us a monopoly, save us the cost of having to retender for the contract in 2017, Wirral Council will save money from having to retender the contract” (which is a bit of a debatable point really anyway considering the extra costs this will cause doing it this way) “and Biffa will be able to borrow money cheaper because we’ll have a longer contract.” To be honest I don’t agree entirely with Biffa’s point about overheads being significantly lower to justify this.

Another letter from Biffa (exempt appendix 3) is also currently being kept secret by Wirral Council officers (pending a decision by politicians). This letter is about an offer to redesign the fleet of bin lorries from 2017 to collect things such as food waste (to meet Wirral Council’s recycling targets).

However Biffa make it clear that this is absolutely Biffa’s final offer (well unless Wirral Council’s Cabinet say no to negotiations or no to the offer in October 2014 and Biffa have to bid for the new contract starting in 2017)!

Wirral Council officers seem very keen to have the Labour councillors on Wirral Council’s Cabinet agree to Biffa’s plan. “80p cheaper per a Wirral person than Liverpool” they state in the report, but strangely 15p more per a person than in Sefton!

Of course Wirral Council’s Cabinet could just choose to reject Biffa’s proposal and decide to bring the service in-house from 2017.

The recent street cleansing cuts to the contract, have been the source of both political and media attention in the recent past. However, what’s the officer’s recommendation?

Oh and before I get to that, Wirral Council asked Eunomia (are they consultants?) in 2012 to look at the Biffa contract, the consultants in fact suggested the contract should be retendered! Eunomia also suggested that if Wirral Council did agree to extend the contract by a further ten years than there should be changes to “contract clauses relating to indexation, labour cost inflation and future efficiency gains” which would be extremely sensible to do considering the current contract is linked to RPI (and let’s face it inflation is quite high)! However the Eunomia assessment is now two years out of date and things have changed somewhat since then.

As Wirral Council officers freely admit in 5.3.4 of this report, they don’t really know if this will save any money at all versus retendering the contract, it all just seems to be educated guesswork and unknown quantities.

The estimated savings have been listed, but surprisingly (and isn’t this usually the case?) not the increased costs (such as an increased audit bill from Grant Thornton for extra work).

It’s the report gets to “legal implications” that things start to get interesting!

Here’s a quote from 10.2 “The Legal colleagues have highlighted that it is necessary to limit the amount of material changes to the contract in order to minimise the risk of the Council being challenged on the legalities of the extension.”

In other words, do it right otherwise one of Biffa’s competitors, or in fact anyone could sue Wirral Council over how it was done.

Then entering into catch 22 territory the legal advice continues:

“Due consideration has been given to establishing whether the Biffa proposal offers Value for Money (Sections 4 and 5 refers) as required under the Council’s Contract Procedure Rules. However, it is important to note that the only decisive way to determine whether a more advantageous contract could be secured by the Council would be through retendering the contract.”

In other words, Wirral Council don’t know whether this saves them money without retendering the contract in 2017, but if they agree to Biffa’s proposal they won’t be retendering the contract in 2017 so they’ll never really know or be able to prove “value for money” to their external auditors Grant Thornton.

However let’s see, what do officers want? They want politicians to agree to them to enter into negotiations with Biffa, more specifically the Strategic Director of Regeneration and Environment (currently Kevin Adderley) and then report back to Cabinet no later than October 2014.

Personally (and this is just an opinion) I think politicians on the Cabinet will probably agree to enter into negotiations with Biffa tonight (even though Labour’s tendency in the past has been to bring back services in-house), if only just to keep their options open in October 2014. Quite what the Rt Hon Frank Field MP’s views on this latest development in the Biffa saga are at the time of writing unknown.

Coming up next today: What Wirral Council’s Cabinet is planning to do about Children’s Centres.

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What are the reasons why Wirral Council plan to consult on closing Lyndale School?

What are the reasons why Wirral Council plan to consult on closing Lyndale School?

What are the reasons why Wirral Council plan to consult on closing Lyndale School?

 

What’s interesting is how Julia Hassall’s (Wirral Council’s Director of Children’s Services) reasons to consult on the closure of Lyndale School have changed over time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxt7NLR2biU#t=13m46s
Julia Hassall addresses the Cabinet (16th January 2014). What’s quoted below starts at 13:46.

Julia Hassall said to Cabinet, “The reasons for considering consulting on closure of the school are set out in paragraph 2.4 of the report. Closure of the school is being proposed for consideration because the viability of the school is compromised by its small size and falling roll which does contribute to a difficult financial position.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_QKYyKwJkQ#t=2m05s
Julia Hassall talks to the Coordinating Committee meeting of the 27th February who were reviewing the Cabinet’s decision starting at 2:05.

Julia Hassall said to the Coordinating Committee, “The report that was presented to Cabinet on the 16th January was seeking approval to consult on the closure of Lyndale School. The report set out the background saying that local authorities have a statutory duty to make sure that there are sufficient places in their area and there’s fair access to educational opportunity to promote every child’s potential.

The reasons why in the report we’re considering the closure of the school is because of the viability of the school was compromised because of its small size and falling roll which both contribute to a difficult financial position and I think as you said Chair [Cllr Steve Foulkes] earlier, this is not in any way because of the standard of care and education within the school which is good and in many aspects outstanding.”

Interview (BBC regional news) 18th March 2014

In an interview Julia Hassall said, “The quality of care and education is really good at this school but there are concerns about whether we can sustain this school going forward” (source interview (ITV regional news) 20th March 2014).

However two days later she seemingly has a complete volte-face on funding or financial reasons being the reason for consulting on closing Lyndale.

Interviewer: This is all about saving money for the Council, isn’t it?
Julia Hassall: It’s absolutely not about saving money for the Council or balancing the Council’s books.
Voiceover: Julia Hassall is Wirral Council’s Director of Children’s Services.
Julia Hassall: If, and it’s very much if Lyndale School closes, the Council does not benefit in any way.
Voiceover: The Council also say that Lyndale children would be well looked after if they had to move to another school.
Julia Hassall: Both of the other schools could care adequately for these children and educate them properly. They’ll need to make some changes and adjustments. We absolutely will not put these children in settings where their needs are not properly met.
Voiceover: A consultation on the future of Lyndale School will start next month, the Council say they are minded to shut it down. The parents will continue their campaign to keep it open.

Below is a copy of page three of a handout at the Coordinating Committee meeting on the 27th February deciding on the call in to consult on closing Lyndale School which explains

LYNDALE SPECIAL PRIMARY SCHOOL, EASTHAM

SURPLUS FORECAST FOR 2014/15
Following a further cost saving exercise (re non teaching staff costs) recently approved by the Governors, & on the basis that the Minimum Funding Guarantee is to be applied, a small surplus is now forecast for 2014/15 & the cumulative deficit at 31/3/15 is now forecast to be approx £18,000, rather than the cumulative £72,000 included in the January Report to Cabinet. Savings from this reorganisation of approx £70,000 per annum, will continue in future years.

AGREED PLACES ALLOCATION
Following the independent reviews undertaken by Eric Craven in 2012, the Governors consider that the appropriate number of places to be allocated to School (as required to be agreed with the Education Funding Agency) to be 28.

TOP UP FUNDING
As detailed in the submissions to the recent consultations, the Governors consider that the currently proposed level of Band 5 Top Up funding of £16,000 per pupil to be insufficient to fund the necessary support required by these children. (As you will be aware, the Governors response to the 2013 consultation considered that the Band 5 Top Up funding should be £27,500 per pupil to adequately cover the various & complex needs of these most vulnerable children. Please also note that the Full Time Equivalent cost of a teaching assistant currently stands at just over £21,000 per annum.)
To this end, the Governors consider it essential for an impartial assessment of the needs of each individual pupil to be undertaken, from which the appropriate level of funding should follow.

PUPIL SAFETY
In view of the Band 5 assessed pupils’ lack of mobility and complete vulnerability, the Governors consider it essential for the children to be educated in a completely safe environment and the current proposals do NOT meet this necessary requirement. It is more cost effective to invest available capital funding in making relatively minor changes to the existing Lyndale premises rather than making significant changes to the newly rebuilt Stanley School or Elleray Park (which is already planned to expand, but purely to adequately deal with their existing pupil numbers.)

EDUCATION
The Governors and staff have always aimed to make Lyndale a Centre of Excellence for the education of PMLD pupils and the current proposals would be detrimental both to the considerable staff expertise which has built up over the years and to the group of available supply staff who provide the necessary support ensuring the best for our children.
Ian D Harrison F C A
Vice Chair of Governors, Lyndale School
26th March 2014

So if anyone could leave a comment detailing the reason (or reasons) why Wirral Council is planning to consult on closing Lyndale School it would be appreciated!

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Are the cuts to Wirral Council’s budget really as bad as politicians have told us?

Are the cuts to Wirral Council’s budget really as bad as politicians have told us?

Are the cuts to Wirral Council’s budget really as bad as politicians have told us?

                        

The information for these tables I’ve used from a Department for Communities and Local Government policy paper which has an explanatory note on how these figures are calculated. Spending power refers to the overall money available for to local councils combining how much they have from Council Tax, business rates and government grants.

Local Authority 2013-14 Spending Power (adjusted) (£ million) 2014-15 Spending Power including Efficiency Support Grant (£ million) Change £ million Change %
Knowsley 198.784 187.589 -11.194 -5.6%
Liverpool 571.351 540.223 -31.129 -5.4%
Sefton 271.588 260.465 -11.123 -4.1%
St Helens 176.510 168.318 -7.832 -4.4%
Wirral 328.860 315.035 -13.825 -4.2%
Merseyside Fire 67.863 64.048 -2.816 -4.1%

The population covered by each is different though, so here is a table showing the spend by dwelling.

Local Authority 2013-14 Spending Power (adjusted) per Dwelling 2014-15 Spending Power including Efficiency Support Grant per Dwelling (£ per dwelling) Change £ per dwelling Change %
Knowsley 3,058.35 2,886.12 -172.23 -5.6%
Liverpool 2,636.01 2,492.39 -143.62 -5.4%
Sefton 2,164.67 2,076.01 -88.65 -4.1%
St Helens 2,193.15 2,095.64 -97.51 -4.4%
Wirral 2,250.35 2,155.75 -94.60 -4.2%
Merseyside Fire 107.10 102.65 -4.44 -4.1%

But what about the Shire I can imagine a politician saying (seemingly forgetting that the Shire is better known for being a fictional place inhabited by hobbits in a fictional world invented by JRR Tolkien)? There are five types of shire, shire unitaries with and without fire, shire counties with and without fire and shire districts. The change in their spending power collectively of each type of shire varies from a 1.2% drop (for shire counties with fire) to a 2.9% drop (for shire unitaries without fire). So yes, in percentage terms the cuts to shires’ budgets are less than the drop in Wirral’s spending power.

However it’s important to note that the spending power of shires was to start with much lower per a dwelling to begin with than Wirral’s. These range from £296.22 per a dwelling for shire districts compared to Wirral’s £2,250.35 to an average of £2,028.61 per a dwelling for shire unitaries with fire.

But what about North Dorset (which seems to be the favourite council for certain Wirral politicians to compare Wirral to)? Well North Dorset has about a fifth of the dwellings that Wirral does. Its spending power for 2013-14 is £7.729 million (2.4% of Wirral’s). Its cut is 2.8% of its budget. Personally I hardly think it’s a fair comparison (although I very much doubt that’ll stop Labour politicians using it).

If we compare Wirral Council to other Merseyside councils (plus the fire authority), the cuts to Wirral Council aren’t exceptional or extraordinary. If we rank the cuts as a percentage to the five councils on Merseyside (plus the fire authority) the cuts to Wirral Council’s budget only come out at fourth.

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Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, Parliamentary ping-pong, “democracy dodgers” and the £556,789 in “forgotten cuts” at Wirral Council

Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, Parliamentary ping-pong, “democracy dodgers” and the £556,789 in “forgotten cuts” at Wirral Council

Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP, Parliamentary ping-pong, “democracy dodgers” and the £556,789 in “forgotten cuts” at Wirral Council

                         

Shortly before Christmas Wirral Council had a “budget options” meeting after the What Really Matters consultation. At this meeting cuts, based on the public response to the consultation for 2014/15 were in principle agreed to. Strictly speaking it was a new budget and policy framework that was agreed to. The budget for 2014/15 is to be decided in March 2014, based on the assumption that Council Tax on Wirral would rise by 2% in 2014/15.

So just to recap, the Labour administration have ruled out a Council Tax referendum. The reason they give is that the large cost of the referendum that would fall on Wirral Council (if you can remember the amount they quoted please leave a comment about what it was and who said it). This is despite the law (The Local Authority (Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases) (Date of Referendum) (England) Order 2013) that states a Council Tax increase referendum would have to be held on the 22nd May 2014 (the same day as the joint European & local Council elections). I’m not sure if the estimated figure a councillor quoted last year for a Council tax increase referendum took into account the reduced cost of the referendum due to holding other elections on the same day (or whether the cost quoted assumed the referendum would be held separately to other elections in which case the estimate is too high).

Labour’s budget assumption therefore assumes that Council Tax will rise by 2% (without the need for a referendum) to lessen the need for further cuts they’d have to make if the rise was any lower or Council Tax was kept the same. The Labour administration have also ruled out accepting a Council Tax Freeze grant equivalent to a 1% rise if they agreed to keep Council Tax the same as last year.

However Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP has different plans and according to an article last week in the Guardian based on leaked Cabinet letters wants to reduce the threshold to 1.5% and refers to councils that rise Council Tax by only two percent as “democracy dodgers” and “believes they need to be punished to show the government is trying to control the cost of living”. Furthermore Pickles states “he wants to stop councils or police bodies being able to exempt some spending from the cap.”

This article in the Bristol Post before Christmas also quotes the Rt Hon Eric Pickles from a statement in relation to council tax increases “as being particularly open to representations suggesting that some lower threshold be applied to councils, given the strong need to protect taxpayers wherever possible from unreasonable increases”.

So what has this got to do with Parliamentary ping-pong? Well the Local Audit and Accountability Bill is heading to its next to the last stage (starting on 21st January) called “parliamentary ping-pong” before the last stage “Royal Assent” and it becomes law. Crucially the section on Council Tax referendum calculations (s.41) comes into force (see s.49) when the act receives Royal Assent and changes the formula of how a yearly Council Tax increase is arrived at.

In future once the Local Audit and Accountability Bill becomes an Act, the calculation of Council Tax rise includes not just Wirral Council’s share of the Council Tax bill, but also (if I’ve read the bill correctly and please leave if a comment if I’m wrong) the other levying bodies that form part of Council Tax bills too. This means the yearly increase in Council Tax requirements in the budgets of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority and the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside would affect what the percentage increase would be.

It looks from the wording of the Local Audit and Accountability Bill (and a lot of recent regulations) that this will come into effect for the 2014/15 financial year. As the basis by which a Council Tax rise is calculated will change, £556,789 is my rough estimate of what changing the threshold from 2% to 1.5% will be as the true amount of extra cuts will depend on what the Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner’s and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s Council Tax requirements for 2014/15 are.

At Wirral Council’s Coordinating Committee meeting (held yesterday at the time of writing), in item 8 (policy update), councillors on the committee will have read in their papers on page 2, under Implications for the Local Audit and Accountability Bill “Budget Strategy considerations may also be impacted by the changes to the Council Tax threshold for triggering a referendum.”

Yet curiously not one of the councillors of the fifteen on the Coordinating Committee asked how much changing the Council Tax threshold for triggering a referendum would affect the budget strategy considerations or to my recollection anything at all about how a change to the Council Tax threshold would affect the 2014/15 Budget.

So is this £½ million of cuts at Wirral Council that councillors seem to be unaware of going to result in a further twelve-week consultation (or will the responses to the What Really Matters consultation be reused)? If any of these further cuts require ninety days consultation with the trade unions will this mean that they will only be realised as part-year savings in 2014/15?

There does seem to be one concession the Liberal Democrats have received though. Any regulations the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP decides to do with council tax increase referendums has to by law be also agreed with Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP first.

So what do you dear reader think? Will Cllr Phil Davies be saying of the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP something similar to the famous Laurel and Hardy quote “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”. With exquisite timing, Wirral Council’s Labour administration will have to agree the budget for 2014/15 around the end of February 2014 meaning these extra cuts will probably feature in the local election period in the lead up to polling day on the 22nd May.

Certainly this apparent lack of a plan B will have to be explained when the Improvement Board returns in March. As the Rt Hon Ed Balls MP (Labour’s Shadow Chancellor) said last October about Labour’s economic competence, “we are going to win based upon our experience, our track record, our credibility”.

Oh and if you think the projected underspend of £884,000 will mean a further £½ million of cuts won’t have to be made in 2014/15 you’d be wrong.

£250,000 of the underspend will probably be agreed tonight to go towards the clean up and repairs to infrastructure in New Brighton following the bad weather. A further £519,000 of the underspend has been earmarked for future restructuring costs leaving (at current estimates) only a projected underspend of £115,000 that can count towards an estimated a £½ million of cuts required if the Coalition government reduce the Council Tax increase referendum threshold to 1.5%.

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Cabinet (Wirral Council) 8th December 2011 Part 4 Council Tax Base 2012/2013, Council Tax Discounts, Council Tax Discounts Consultation, Insolvency and Charging Orders Policy, Capital Program (2012-2015)

Ian Coleman said report 4 (Council Tax Base 2012/2013) was an annual update and the basis for the grant settlement. Cllr Foulkes asked if the Cabinet were happy to endorse it and it was agreed.

Ian Coleman then introduced the report on Council Tax discounts. He said there were a range of discounts in line with legislation, some they had the power to vary. Cllr Foulkes asked about the second home issue and his opinions on that. Ian Coleman said it was too soon to say although he wasn’t suggesting any changes to it. Cllr Foulkes said he was happy to accept it and it was agreed.

Ian Coleman introduced agenda item 6 (Council Tax Discounts – Consultation on Technical Reform) as a Department of Communities and Local Government consultation paper. He said it didn’t cover the Single Person Discount which was not included in the consultation. However second homes, empty homes, solar panels and annexes were included. There was a proposed response attached as an appendix.

Cllr Foulkes asked the Cabinet if they were happy to agree the response. It was agreed.

Ian Coleman introduced the report on Insolvency and Charging Orders Policy. He said there were minor amendments which was being updated because of legislation changes. Cllr Foulkes asked if Cabinet were happy to agree the policy, so it was agreed.

Ian Coleman then introduced the Capital Program and Financing for 2012-2015 which was to be sent to the Department for Communities and Local Government who would decide the final grant at the beginning of February. There had been a review because of slippage in 2010/2011 which had a knock on effect on 2011/2012, there had also been some delays to projects in 2011/12 and 2012/13. Projects had made bids for money with the weightings agreed by Cabinet and those that scored highest went ahead. Cllr Foulkes said he was happy to endorse it and it was agreed.